global pandemic

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pages: 1,072 words: 237,186

How to Survive a Pandemic by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Anthropocene, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, double helix, Edward Jenner, friendly fire, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Helicobacter pylori, inventory management, Kickstarter, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, New Journalism, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, phenotype, profit motive, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, supply-chain management, the medium is the message, Westphalian system, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zoonotic diseases

Washington Post, August 23. 350. Osterholm M, Colwell R, Garrett L, Fauci AS. 2005. The Council on Foreign Relations meeting: the threat of global pandemics. Federal News Service, June 16. cfr.org/publication.html.?id=8198. 351. Bor J. 2005. A versatile virus: an expert in infectious diseases explains why avian flu could trigger the next pandemic. Baltimore Sun, July 1. 352. Osterholm M, Colwell R, Garrett L, Fauci AS. 2005. The Council on Foreign Relations meeting: the threat of global pandemics. Federal News Service, June 16. cfr.org/publication.html.?id=8198. 353. Arnst C. 2005. A hot zone in the heartland.

Public Broadcasting System. American Experience Transcript. 1918 Influenza. pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/filmmore/transcript/transcript1.html. 646. Osterholm M, Colwell R, Garrett L, Fauci AS. 2005. The Council on Foreign Relations meeting: the threat of global pandemics. Federal News Service, June 16. www.cfr.org/publication/8198/threat_of_global_pandemics.html. 647. Antigua KJC, Choi WS, Baek YH, Song MS. 2019. The emergence and decennary distribution of clade 2.3 4.4 HPAI H5Nx. Microorganisms. 7(6):e156. https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms7060156. 648. Weekly Epidemiological Record. 2005. H5N1 avian influenza: first steps towards development of a human vaccine.

Lederberg J, Shope RE, Oaks SC. 1992. Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States (Washington, DC: National Academies Press). 657. Osterholm M, Colwell R, Garrett L, Fauci AS. 2005. The Council on Foreign Relations meeting: the threat of global pandemics. Federal News Service, June 16. www.cfr.org/publication/8198/threat_of_global_pandemics.html. 658. Garrett L. 2005. The next pandemic? Probable cause. Foreign Affairs 84(4). www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701faessay84401/laurie-Garrett/the-next-pandemic.html. 659. Lurie N, Saville M, Hatchett R, Halton J. 2020. Developing Covid-19 vaccines at pandemic speed.


pages: 245 words: 71,886

Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story by Jeremy Farrar, Anjana Ahuja

"World Economic Forum" Davos, bioinformatics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, dual-use technology, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, machine translation, nudge unit, open economy, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, side project, social distancing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, zoonotic diseases

The UK government, in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, WHO, G7, EU and other organisations, is launching the Global Pandemic Radar (GPR). This will be a global surveillance system with a clear purpose: to identify clusters of disease; to prevent clusters seeding epidemics; and to prevent epidemics turning into pandemics. It will unite traditional public health knowledge with twenty-first-century technology, such as genomic sequencing, the smarter use of data, artificial intelligence, plus non-traditional sources of information like rumours on social media. The blueprint for the Global Pandemic Radar is being finalised and, given there is no time to waste, should be functional this year.

CHAPTER 3 AM I SUPPOSED TO CALL THE FBI? CHAPTER 4 WORRYING ABOUT A RIPPLE ... CHAPTER 5 IF THE PLAN IS CHICKEN POX PARTIES ... CHAPTER 6 IT’S TAKEN AN EMOTIONAL TOLL ON EVERYONE CHAPTER 7 ARE WE COMPLICIT IN THE OUTCOMES? CHAPTER 8 THE VACCINES VS THE VARIANTS CHAPTER 9 THIS DID NOT HAVE TO BE A GLOBAL PANDEMIC NOTES GLOSSARY DRAMATIS PERSONAE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 If anything happens to me, this is what you need to know ... 30 DECEMBER 2019 Known cases: 4 I WAS IN AN AIRPORT lounge on New Year’s Eve 2019 when my mobile rang. I was heading back to England from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I had been visiting the Ebola vaccination centres in Rwanda across the politically fraught border region of North Kivu.

It was also the day that he asked us all a question that would stay with me: ‘Two weeks from now, are there things that we wished we could have done to reshape the challenge we will likely face? ... We have a very narrow window to act.’ The aim, Carter said, was to ‘shape the battlefield’. After Davos, I was sure this was turning into a global pandemic. I discussed with Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty, the UK government’s chief scientific and medical advisers, how the country should prepare and that we should try to start vaccine clinical trials as soon as possible in case US President Donald Trump refused to share future American-made vaccines.


pages: 106 words: 33,210

The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again by Richard Horton

Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, cognitive bias, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, fake news, Future Shock, global pandemic, global village, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, lockdown, nowcasting, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Slavoj Žižek, social distancing, South China Sea, zoonotic diseases

Since Wuhan’s lockdown began on 23 January, that meant at least ten weeks of the most extreme measures to extinguish virus transmission. Wuhan did cautiously start lifting its restrictions on social mixing on 8 April. But many schools, shops and cinemas remained closed. Gabriel Leung, who correctly predicted that a global pandemic would ensue from the events in Wuhan, was working intensively to define what an exit strategy should look like.8 He and his team in Hong Kong warned against relaxing restrictions too soon. If the Ro crept above 1 again, a second wave of the pandemic would be inevitable. He advised resuming economic activity in lockdown settings under what he called an Ro<1 constraint.

The WHO pushed China’s misinformation about the virus, saying it was not communicable and there was no need for travel bans … The WHO’s reliance on China’s disclosures likely caused a twenty-fold increase in cases worldwide and it may be much more than that. The WHO has not addressed a single one of these concerns nor provided a serious explanation that acknowledges its own mistakes of which there were many. I believe that President Trump’s decision to cut funding to WHO in the middle of a global pandemic constituted a crime against humanity. Is that claim an exaggeration? No, and here is why. WHO exists to protect the health and wellbeing of the world’s peoples. A crime against humanity is a knowing and inhumane attack against a people. By attacking and weakening WHO while the agency was doing all it could to protect peoples in some of the most vulnerable countries in the world, President Trump has, in my view, met the criteria for the act of violence the international community calls a crime against humanity

Its budget was savaged, reducing epidemic prevention efforts across the world, including in China. The position of White House director for global health security and biothreats was axed by John Bolton, then national security advisor, in 2019, leaving no one to identify and call out the dangers of a global pandemic. The US was spectacularly unprepared for SARS-CoV-2, largely owing to its own acts of self-harm. These turns away from investment in national and global health security reflect a larger trend: a general political antipathy to globalism – that is, an appreciation of the importance of international interdependence, solidarity and cooperation between nations and peoples.


pages: 328 words: 96,678

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Assembling them in one place reveals how they overlap and reinforce one another. There are links between debt accumulation and debt traps, easy money and financial crises, artificial intelligence (AI) and workplace automation, deglobalization, geopolitical clashes among great powers, inflation and stagflation, currency meltdowns, income inequality and populism, global pandemics and climate change. Each hampers our ability to address the others. A single threat sounds distressing. Ten megathreats happening at once is far, far worse. After examining each threat in its own chapter, I will consider our collective prospects for surviving them. Spoiler alert: without amazing luck, almost unprecedented economic growth, and unlikely global cooperation, this won’t end well.

The peristent talk and practice of deglobalization and fragmentation of the global economy; the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the risk that this conflict could expand geographically and in unconventional ways; the drum-beats of talk of a new Cold War between the US (and its Western allies) and China (and its effective allies Russia, Iran, and North Korea), and the rising tensions between the US and China on Taiwan; the massive droughts and heat waves from India and Pakistan to Sub-Saharan Africa and to the West of the United States, as global climate change is becoming more severe; the Chinese growth slowdown and the risk of a hard landing given its misguided Zero Covid tolerance policy; a global pandemic that was not yet controlled in many poorer nations and likely to mutate further in new variants; the risk of energy insecurity, of hunger, and even famines given the spike in food, energy, and other commodity prices. These were all ominous signs of a much worse and dangerous future and megathreats in the decade ahead.

Today, we can see enormous amounts of debt wherever we look. Yet, like an iceberg, much more implicit debt lies below the surface. We know precisely how much money binds lenders and borrowers. We cannot measure the implicit cost of salvaging unfunded elderly health care and pension liabilities, the costs of climate change, the costs of future global pandemics, and other untold liabilities. Our debt crisis would still be terrible even if it was the only megathreat we faced, and even if our policy makers were as wise as Solon. Yet it’s much worse. All of our lessons from history have been based on a world of growing population, with growing labor pools to help local economies climb out of trouble.


pages: 406 words: 88,977

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates

augmented reality, call centre, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demographic dividend, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, Edward Jenner, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hans Rosling, lockdown, Neal Stephenson, Picturephone, profit motive, QR code, remote working, social distancing, statistical model, TED Talk, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

People from GERM would have to work closely with them, making it clear that their job is to support, not supplant, local expertise. If GERM becomes—or even appears to be—something imposed from the outside, some countries will reject its recommendations. For countries that need additional support, GERM should fund or loan public health experts who would participate in this global pandemic-prevention network. They would train and drill together to keep their skills sharp, and they would stay ready to respond locally or globally when they’re needed. Countries with greater need and a high risk of outbreaks would bring in more GERM team members from the network and host them to build local expertise in infectious diseases.

See epidemic disease surveillance dexamethasone, 113–14, 136 diagnostic tests, 12–13, 19, 61–66 accuracy, 62, 63, 64 antigen tests, 63, 63, 251 cost reduction, 66, 226 innovation in, 64–66, 223–24, 234 lateral flow immunoassay technology, 63, 224 LumiraDx machines for, 64, 224 mass testing, 81 Nexar system, 65 PCR tests, 62–65, 63, 71, 224, 253 prioritizing recipients, 82 speed of results, 62–63, 64, 65 trucker testing, Uganda, 27, 27 ultra-high-throughput processing, 65 U.S. testing failures, 28–30, 29n diarrheal diseases, 5–6 deaths, sub-Saharan Africa, 199 Gates Foundation and, 58 prevention, 6 reducing child mortality and, 215 vaccines and, 6, 6n, 169 digital future, 237–50, 237n COVID lockdowns and digital tools, 237 e-commerce and, 238 education and, 238, 246–48 health data collection, 245 “metaverse,” 242–44 online meetings and platforms, 238, 241–43 remote-work options, 239–41 smartphones and, 237 telehealth services, 244–45 video calls, 249–50 video conferencing, 238 workplace augmented reality, 244n workplace automation, 244 workplace productivity, 241 disease modelers, 77–80 benefits for public health, 79 COVID deaths prediction, 80 data for, 79–80, 82 meteorologist analogy, 78–79, 79n Douglas Scientific, 65 drug development, 122–38, 222 accidental invention, 123 of acetaminophen, 123 of antibodies, 134–35 of antiviral drugs, 123–24 of chloroform, 123 CHO platform and, 134–35 clinical trials, 117, 126–27, 126n costs, 131–32 COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, 129–30, 129n drug candidates, chance of success, 140, 140n global pandemic plan and, 220–21 high-throughput screening, 125 history of, 122–23 of HIV antivirals, 124–25 human challenge study, 130–31 identifying targets (proteins), 124 infection-blocking drugs, 174–75, 220 innate immune response boosters, 137 innovations, 123–25, 130, 137–38 of Paxlovid, 124 phases of, 125–28 placebos, 126–27 Probability of Technical and Regulatory Success, 140 production/manufacturing, 131, 221 RECOVERY trial, U.K., 128, 221 regulatory approval, 128, 220–21 structure-guided drug discovery, 124 synthesized drugs, 122–23 targeting patients and training health care workers, 136–37, 137n E Ebola, 4, 11 contact tracing and, 97 EOCs in Nigeria and, 50, 213 epidemic (2014), 11–13, 56, 213 genetic sequencing and finding origins of an outbreak, 70 mutations (variants), 69 outbreaks (1976 to 2018), 7 polio surveillance teams and, 56 preventing outbreaks, 70 transmission, 11, 12 viral-vectored vaccine for, 156 endemic disease, 6, 188, 226 COVID as, 6, 216, 218 endemic killers, 7 EOCs (emergency operations centers), 49–51, 50, 212 epidemic disease surveillance, 53–82, 217 active or passive, 56, 226 birth/death records and, 57–58, 225 blog posts and social media, 56 causes of death, 58–59, 81 child mortality and, 58–59 computer modeling and, 82 diagnostic tests, 54, 61–66 digital data system, 64 disease modelers, 77–80 experts linking with governments, 76 genetic information on pathogens and, 68–70, 69, 76–77, 81, 225–26 global pandemic plan, 225–27 health systems and, 55–56, 77, 81 integration of systems, 226 in Japan, postal workers and, 57 on the local level, 54 mass testing and, 81 obstacles to, 54 ongoing for COVID, 217 reporting from pharmacists, 57 Seattle Flu Study and, 66–76 signals in the environment, 57 steps to take, 81–82 underinvestment in, 53 wastewater testing, 57 West African polio surveillance teams, 57 epidemics, 6, 7, 13 Global Fund and, 252 “silent epidemics,” 7–8 epidemiology/epidemiologists, 47, 68–70, 69, 76 European Union (EU) COVID vaccination in, 154 development aid by, 232 vaccine approval and, 169 vaccine manufacture and, 221 vaccine purchase, 229 Exemplars in Global Health, 26 F Famulare, Michael, 72, 72n, 80 Fauci, Anthony, 15–16, 86, 88, 153 FDA (U.S.

., 128, 221 regulatory approval, 128, 220–21 structure-guided drug discovery, 124 synthesized drugs, 122–23 targeting patients and training health care workers, 136–37, 137n E Ebola, 4, 11 contact tracing and, 97 EOCs in Nigeria and, 50, 213 epidemic (2014), 11–13, 56, 213 genetic sequencing and finding origins of an outbreak, 70 mutations (variants), 69 outbreaks (1976 to 2018), 7 polio surveillance teams and, 56 preventing outbreaks, 70 transmission, 11, 12 viral-vectored vaccine for, 156 endemic disease, 6, 188, 226 COVID as, 6, 216, 218 endemic killers, 7 EOCs (emergency operations centers), 49–51, 50, 212 epidemic disease surveillance, 53–82, 217 active or passive, 56, 226 birth/death records and, 57–58, 225 blog posts and social media, 56 causes of death, 58–59, 81 child mortality and, 58–59 computer modeling and, 82 diagnostic tests, 54, 61–66 digital data system, 64 disease modelers, 77–80 experts linking with governments, 76 genetic information on pathogens and, 68–70, 69, 76–77, 81, 225–26 global pandemic plan, 225–27 health systems and, 55–56, 77, 81 integration of systems, 226 in Japan, postal workers and, 57 on the local level, 54 mass testing and, 81 obstacles to, 54 ongoing for COVID, 217 reporting from pharmacists, 57 Seattle Flu Study and, 66–76 signals in the environment, 57 steps to take, 81–82 underinvestment in, 53 wastewater testing, 57 West African polio surveillance teams, 57 epidemics, 6, 7, 13 Global Fund and, 252 “silent epidemics,” 7–8 epidemiology/epidemiologists, 47, 68–70, 69, 76 European Union (EU) COVID vaccination in, 154 development aid by, 232 vaccine approval and, 169 vaccine manufacture and, 221 vaccine purchase, 229 Exemplars in Global Health, 26 F Famulare, Michael, 72, 72n, 80 Fauci, Anthony, 15–16, 86, 88, 153 FDA (U.S.


pages: 652 words: 172,428

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order by Colin Kahl, Thomas Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, deglobalization, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, future of work, George Floyd, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, job automation, junk bonds, Kibera, lab leak, liberal world order, lockdown, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, mobile money, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, one-China policy, open borders, open economy, Paris climate accords, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey, zoonotic diseases

Kessel, and Melissa Chan, “Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State,” New York Times, April 24, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html; “Chinese Tech Supports Ecuador’s Response to COVID-19,” Xinhua Net, May 30, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020–05/30/c_139100735.htm; Aidan Powers-Riggs, “Covid-19 Is Proving a Boon for Digital Authoritarianism,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, August 17, 2020, https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/covid-19-proving-boon-digital-authoritarianism.   39.  Erica Chenoweth et al., “The Global Pandemic Has Spawned New Forms of Activism—and They’re Flourishing,” The Guardian, April 20, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/20/the-global-pandemic-has-spawned-new-forms-of-activism-and-theyre-flourishing; Anna Lührmann et al., Autocratization Surges—Resistance Grows: Democracy Report 2020 (Gothenburg: V-Dem Institute, 2020), 21, https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/de/39/de39af54–0bc5–4421–89ae-fb20dcc53dba/democracy_report.pdf.   40.  

No one knew what the ultimate death toll could be, but a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation was terrifying. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that up to 1.7 million Americans could die. German officials worried that they could lose half a million people. Everyone had known some sort of global pandemic was possible; some countries had even planned for it. But now that one had arrived, many leaders were flying blind. To curb the spread, economies were deliberately shut down, but that triggered an unimaginable worldwide recession that rivaled that of the Great Depression of the 1930s (or so it seemed for a while).

This was apparent in the two decades following the Great War and the Great Influenza, commonly referred to as the “interwar years”—one of the most turbulent and consequential periods in modern times. The events of the interwar period are worth reflecting upon. As we saw in Chapter 1, the Great Influenza demonstrated the potential for global pandemics to shape international order by undermining the material capabilities of key states and by producing contingent historical events, such as the illness of Woodrow Wilson, that ripple through time. In the immediate postwar period, the hangover from the pandemic was not the sole—or in many cases the primary—driver of world events.


How to Work Without Losing Your Mind by Cate Sevilla

Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, emotional labour, gender pay gap, Girl Boss, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, imposter syndrome, job satisfaction, lockdown, microaggression, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Skype, tech bro, TED Talk, women in the workforce, work culture

From ill members of staff to remote working to IT issues with everyone working remotely to furloughing or laying off staff and closing entire departments or completely shutting down – managers and those in leadership positions were very quickly forced to deal with issues and situations that most had never had to tackle before – and certainly not all at once, during something as intense and as threatening as a global pandemic and threatened economic collapse. But no matter the exact circumstances or situation, managing in a crisis will put anyone’s management skills to the test. While there wasn’t a ‘How to Manage in a Global Pandemic’ rule book to consult (although I’m sure several will have now been published), there are certain things to keep in mind during a crisis of any kind. Be transparent. Even if you don’t have all the answers, share the ones you’re able to.

Work, for those lucky enough to have it – whether a ‘9 to 5’, steady freelance gigs or enough paid hours to pay the rent – was what gave our days, weeks and lives structure – the takeaway coffee on the way to the station, the podcasts listened to on our daily commute, the faces of colleagues seen day in and day out, the misery of train delays on the way home. The global pandemic blew all of this to smithereens. People worldwide lost their jobs in incomprehensible numbers. The world of work has been changed in unprecedented ways. People who had never worked from home before were suddenly doing it every day. People who previously had no idea what Zoom was were suddenly using it several times a day for important meetings (and the occasional pub quiz).

They’ll allow you to manage your professional reputation, your work and your sanity well. You’re teaching people how to treat you at work, and hopefully setting a positive example for other people in the office at the same time. Setting boundaries when you don’t work in an office For those of us who were able to work at home during the global pandemic, working remotely brought with it a whole new host of problems. Suddenly a huge part of the world’s workforce were communicating via video calls, huddled in messy kitchens while their toddlers wailed in another room, or hid from their partner’s loud conference call while stuffed in whatever corner of their home wasn’t piled with laundry.


Uncontrolled Spread by Scott Gottlieb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Atul Gawande, Bernie Sanders, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, fear of failure, global pandemic, global supply chain, Kevin Roose, lab leak, Larry Ellison, lockdown, medical residency, Nate Silver, randomized controlled trial, social distancing, stem cell, sugar pill, synthetic biology, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

Honest debate is one thing, but our response was demoralized by a sizable enterprise devoted to manufacturing skepticism about any steps that could potentially reduce the scope of the spread, even obviously effective measures like masks or vaccines. In this book, I examine the shortcomings that exposed America to the worst effects of this virus, and I try to draw some lessons on how we can make ourselves more resilient to similar threats. We must be better prepared when another dangerous pathogen inevitably emerges and threatens a global pandemic, but our purpose shouldn’t be simply to make sure we’re better equipped to respond, but to secure a greater assurance that a global contagion on the scale of COVID can never happen again. Reflecting on where our response fell short can provide a roadmap for how to be more effective when the next virus emerges.

Our health officials were overwhelmed early on with repatriating Americans from China and focused too little attention on preparing the homeland for the inevitable spread of the virus. Many publicly clung to a tragic view that SARS-CoV-2 wouldn’t become epidemic here. By March, when the evidence that it would spark a global pandemic could no longer be discounted, it was too late. That relative complacency was being fed by reliance on faulty information that had US officials believing that the virus wasn’t spreading here, even long after it had actually arrived in our communities. It was driven largely by a failure to field a test that would let us screen for it.

Most countries still had laws in place that tied their local action not to the declaration of a PHEIC, but to the declaration of a pandemic by the WHO—a higher standard that had not yet been met in the WHO’s estimation. Indeed, the WHO wouldn’t declare the novel coronavirus to be a pandemic until five weeks later, on March 11, well after it was clear to anyone watching the news that a global pandemic was already under way. “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” the director general said at a briefing held to announce the belated declaration of a pandemic.75 By that point, the ground was shifting. A day earlier, on March 10, President Xi visited Wuhan to mark the culmination of a harsh seventy-six-day lockdown of that city that had largely succeeded in arresting the epidemic there.


pages: 595 words: 143,394

Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, critical race theory, defund the police, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, illegal immigration, inventory management, lab leak, lockdown, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, obamacare, Oculus Rift, Paris climate accords, Ponzi scheme, power law, QR code, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, statistical model, tech billionaire, TikTok

Across the country at the state, local, and federal levels, political actors rammed through hundreds of structural changes to the manner and oversight of elections, resulting in what Time magazine would later call “a revolution in how people vote.”15 Some of these changes were enacted by state legislatures, some by courts, and others by state and county election officials. Many changes, allegedly justified by the global pandemic, were broad reforms that Democrats had long desired. The crisis was their chance to sneak in contentious policies through the back door. The bedrock of the American republic is that elections must be free, fair, accurate, and trusted. Election lawyers will tell you that fraud is almost impossible to conclusively find after the fact, and that to fight it, strong rules and regulations are needed on the front end.

His final stop in Cleveland was at Burke Lakefront Airport, where masked guests in one hundred spaced-out vehicles honked in the place of polite applause.4 In Pennsylvania, he hosted small drive-in events in Allegheny County and Pittsburgh. The last two weeks of the 2020 election had been the most normal anyone on the campaign had experienced in months. Just as Biden locked up his nomination in March, the country locked down in response to the coronavirus outbreak, a global pandemic that had spread across the world from its origin in Wuhan, China. The pandemic crushed the thriving economy, one of Trump’s major selling points as the country underwent what he liked to call a “blue-collar boom.”5 His deregulatory agenda, tax cuts, willingness to tackle illegal immigration to stop the flood of cheap labor into the country, and renegotiation of trade deals to strengthen industry had jump-started an economy that had been flagging throughout his predecessor’s two terms.

Trump was the first president in forty years who hadn’t invaded a country or launched a new war.4 He brought peace to the Middle East, brokering a series of historic deals between Arab nations and Israel.5 And he shifted the nation’s foreign policy focus to China, a nation that much of the country had come to view as a serious adversary. The spread of the COVID-19 virus from China changed everything. The global pandemic squelched the thriving economy that was Trump’s best argument for re-election. In fact, it shut down the country entirely.6 Children were banned from school. Religious adherents were prevented from worship. Restaurants and gathering places were shuttered. It gave the media massive reserves of fuel for their unhinged anti-Trump operation.


pages: 601 words: 135,202

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Henri Poincaré, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, junk bonds, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, meme stock, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, short squeeze, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, working-age population, yield curve

Likewise, prominent Democrats in 2020 considered trying to use one of the market rescue programs the Fed had established to funnel cheap money to state and local governments in lieu of passing legislation. These issues are unlikely to go away. While the Fed’s actions in 2020 came in response to an unprecedented global pandemic, the pages ahead will make clear that the financial vulnerabilities that necessitated huge Fed action were kindling waiting for a spark. They were known weaknesses, and many of them still exist. It is somewhere between possible and likely that Fed market interventions like the ones that took place during the pandemic will be required again in the future.

Nobody, however, questioned that they needed to do whatever they could to fix the government bond market. So it was, on a Sunday in March, that the central bank voted to begin rescuing Wall Street and the economy for the second time in a dozen years. * * * — The root cause of the crisis in 2020 was a global pandemic, not irresponsible risk-taking by banks and investors. Likewise, the solution was no repeat of the bank-specific bailouts of 2008. This time around, the Fed would buy government-backed bonds—huge sums of them—until the market traded more normally. It was a pumped-up version of a bond-buying program that had first been enacted more than a decade earlier.[7] Of course, some investors would undeniably benefit, including hedge funds that had amassed huge Treasury holdings as part of a trade that was usually safe but that had turned disastrous in the face of the March 2020 volatility.

“We were always too slow and too timid in responding to the crisis,” Kashkari told 60 Minutes, referencing the prior meltdown.[11] “Today, whether it’s healthcare policy makers, fiscal policy makers, which means Congress, or the Federal Reserve, we should all be erring on the side of overreacting to try to avoid the worst economic outcomes.” The Fed would do just that in the months ahead. In the spring of 2020 and over the two years that followed, as the global pandemic first imperiled society’s most important financial markets and then—together with massive government spending—touched off an unexpected chain of events that revived long-dormant inflation, America’s central bank would more fully embrace its role as the most powerful economic institution the modern world had ever known.


pages: 368 words: 102,379

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick by J. David McSwane

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, commoditize, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, global pandemic, global supply chain, Internet Archive, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, military-industrial complex, obamacare, open economy, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, ransomware, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Bannon, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, uber lyft, Y2K

And all 330 million Americans were along for the ride. Moments after our “invisible enemy” was named, the nation’s foremost disease expert, speaking at a public forum in Aspen, Colorado, sought to elucidate the virus. He said the risk was “relatively low” to most Americans but hedged. “Is there a risk that this is going to turn into a global pandemic?” said Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Absolutely, yes.” For more than thirty-five years, Fauci had served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, under the National Institutes of Health, advising six presidents on everything from HIV/AIDS to Ebola to the disease that had been named just moments before.

On March 9, many weeks after Bright and Bowen and others had sounded the alarm on the looming mask shortage, Kadlec’s office sought a meeting with the CEO of 3M to get more masks flowing into the stockpile, according to emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. On March 11, the WHO made it official: COVID-19 was a global pandemic. That same day, responding to an outbreak in New Orleans, officials in Louisiana requested tens of thousands of respirators, masks, face shields, and gowns. Oregon requested 400,000 N95s and 600,000 surgical masks. And the requests kept coming. Officials in North Carolina, seeing little help from the federal government, reached out to the home improvement chain Lowe’s, which is headquartered there, to see about buying every mask the company had.

“How are you today? What can I do for you?” It was near 5 p.m. on March 15, 2020, the same day the CDC warned against gatherings of more than fifty people, just two days after President Donald Trump had declared a national state of emergency, four days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and many weeks after this call should have come. “Health and Human Services has asked for some logistics planning help,” VanHerck said. Polowczyk took that to mean that HHS secretary Azar or ASPR Kadlec had reached out for help from the Defense Department. “Yeah, uh, okay,” Polowczyk said.


pages: 272 words: 76,154

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World by Dambisa Moyo

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, gender pay gap, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Lyft, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Pershing Square Capital Management, proprietary trading, remote working, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, Washington Consensus, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture

The coronavirus may have amplified the challenges facing today’s global companies, but I believe now more than ever in the positive role these corporations—and their boards—can play in society. Businesses are reckoning with a period of shocks, tremendous uncertainty, and heightened complexity that is testing whether corporations, and indeed capitalism itself, will survive. The damage caused by the 2020 global pandemic—both in economic terms and in the cost to human health—has intensified a debate about corporate power that was already underway. Today, popular opinion is turning against large corporations, and political, social, and cultural landscapes are shifting at a rapid clip. Boards go about their work acutely aware of the stakes of their decisions.

Failure could imperil the health of the global economy and, with it, jobs, prosperity, human progress, and the “American way of life” that not only Americans but people around the world have long pursued. No one organization, government, or individual can provide stability amid the turbulence. But the 2020 global pandemic has revealed that corporations have an important and central role to play in navigating global disruption. In all times, but especially in times of turmoil, corporate boards have a responsibility as custodians not just of a single organization, but of our economic well-being as a whole. The prosperity of society relies on corporate boards succeeding.

The growth of anti-corporate sentiment in recent years has even led some to hope for such an outcome—there are those who would cheer the destruction of the corporate landscape as we know it. Of course, they overlook the devastating consequences of such a scenario: the economy would contract, investment in innovation would plummet, millions of jobs would be lost, pension and health-care benefits would evaporate, and living standards would collapse worldwide. The 2020 global pandemic and economic shutdown has offered an unnerving idea of what economic carnage might look like in terms of spiking unemployment and plummeting growth prospects, especially in the most affected sectors of travel, tourism, and retail. Recent memory provides plenty of examples of the fallout of individual corporate failure.


pages: 289 words: 86,165

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

"there is no alternative" (TINA), 15-minute city, AlphaGo, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, Day of the Dead, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, imperial preference, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Monroe Doctrine, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, oil shock, open borders, out of africa, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, social distancing, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, UNCLOS, universal basic income, urban planning, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

In many ways, we’re even more vulnerable today. Densely packed cities, wars, natural disasters, and international air travel mean a deadly virus propagated in a small village in Africa can be transmitted almost anywhere in the world, including the United States, within 24 hours. . . . Biosecurity and global pandemics cut across all national boundaries. Pathogens, viruses, and diseases are equal-opportunity killers. When the crisis comes, we will wish we had more funding and more global cooperation. But then, it will be too late. It was too late. We had ample warning to gird ourselves for Covid-19. But beyond the specific dangers of a pandemic, we should have recognized the general possibility of a shock to our system.

Economic anxiety bred cultural anxiety, hostility to immigration, and a nostalgic desire to return to a familiar past. Right-wing populism gained strength across the West. The third shock is the one we are living through. It may be the biggest of them all, and it is certainly the most global. What began as a health-care problem in China soon became a global pandemic. But that was only the start. The medical crisis prompted a simultaneous lockdown of all business across the globe, resulting in a Great Paralysis, the cessation of economics itself. By some measures, the economic damage from this pandemic already rivals that of the Great Depression. The political consequences will play out over the coming years in different ways in different countries.

A couple of months later, the British politician Michael Gove was quizzed about his advocacy for Brexit and asked to name a few economists who supported his view that leaving the European Union would be good for business. His response: “People in this country have had enough of experts.” Now that the world has experienced a global pandemic, it should have become painfully clear that people need to listen to experts. But that is not exactly how things have worked out. To be sure, in many countries, particularly in East Asia, there was a strong, instinctive deference to authority, especially scientific authority. Taiwan’s near-flawless response was overseen by its vice president, a Johns Hopkins-educated epidemiologist who previously steered Taiwan through the SARS epidemic as health minister.


pages: 735 words: 165,375

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, business cycle, buttonwood tree, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, defund the police, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discovery of penicillin, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, future of work, Future Shock, gentrification, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global village, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Honoré de Balzac, income inequality, industrial cluster, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, job automation, jobless men, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge worker, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, place-making, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Richard Florida, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, Socratic dialogue, spinning jenny, superstar cities, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech baron, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, union organizing, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, working poor, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

To get a more effective national government, we must first collectively agree on shared objectives—like preventing pandemic and extending life spans. We must then judge our national leaders on their ability to achieve those objectives, just as we already fire our mayors when they take too long to clear the streets of snow in winter. The fight against global pandemic requires not only more national competence, but also a multinational entity that monitors the globe for new outbreaks and speedily closes the travel routes that spread death. Across the world, a plague that begins in an Indian pit latrine or a Chinese open-air market can infect billions. Even the best-run countries were flattened by COVID-19.

After World War II, NATO was given a clear mission—preventing an attack on its members by the Soviet Union—and a budget commensurate with it. NATO was spectacularly successful. In the same way, a revitalized international health organization must monitor the emergence of any new infectious disease and set rules about disease risk, reporting, and travel. To reduce the risk of global pandemic, the rich world should be willing to contribute more to ensure better sanitation in the world’s poorest cities. The price of that aid could be the enforcement of bans on excessive mixing of humans, bats, pigs, and other animals involved in spreading viral disease, along with limits on excessive use of antibiotics that might seed the next superbug.

It must have the ability to investigate without restraint. There must be consequences for countries that fail to limit risks. And it must be sufficiently resourced. After World War II, the West invented such a structure, and it defended Europe from the Soviet Union for forty years. The threat of global pandemic is similarly dire and requires no less a commitment. Even with such a structure, pandemics can still occur. The risk will never be zero. In this chapter, we have focused on the first source of urban vulnerability. Cities are nodes on a global network, and they provide the ports of entry for any new disease.


pages: 669 words: 195,743

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

Alfred Russel Wallace, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, conceptual framework, coronavirus, dark matter, digital map, double helix, experimental subject, facts on the ground, Fellow of the Royal Society, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Earth, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, out of africa, Pearl River Delta, South China Sea, the long tail, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

When a pathogen leaps from some nonhuman animal into a person, and succeeds there in establishing itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing illness or death, the result is a zoonosis. It’s a mildly technical term, zoonosis, unfamiliar to most people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the ominous headlines about swine flu, bird flu, SARS, emerging diseases in general, and the threat of a global pandemic. It helps us comprehend why medical science and public health campaigns have been able to conquer some horrific diseases, such as smallpox and polio, but unable to conquer other horrific diseases, such as dengue and yellow fever. It says something essential about the origins of AIDS. It’s a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the twenty-first century.

(It’s a little confusing, I concede, that they use R0 as the symbol for basic reproduction rate and plain R as the symbol for recovered in an SIR model. That’s just a clumsy coincidence, reflecting the fact that both words begin with the letter R.) R0 explains and, to some limited degree, it predicts. It defines the boundary between a small cluster of weird infections in a tropical village somewhere, flaring up, burning out, and a global pandemic. It came from George MacDonald. 28 Plasmodium falciparum isn’t the only malarial parasite of global concern. Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, most human cases are caused by Plasmodium vivax, the second-worst of the four kinds adapted particularly to infecting people. (The other two, P. ovale and P. malariae, are far more rare and not nearly so virulent, causing infections that usually pass without medical treatment.)

Most of those papers are narrowly technical, addressing the details of molecular evolution, reservoir relationships, or epidemiology, but some take a broader view, asking What is it that makes this virus unusual? and What have we learned from the SARS experience? One thought that turns up in the latter sort is that “humankind has had a lucky escape.” The scenario could have been very much worse. SARS in 2003 was an outbreak, not a global pandemic. Eight thousand cases are relatively few, for such an explosive infection; 774 people died, not 7 million. Several factors contributed to limiting the scope and the impact of the outbreak, of which humanity’s good luck was only one. Another was the speed and excellence of the laboratory diagnostics—finding the virus and identifying it—performed by Malik Peiris, Guan Yi, their partners in Hong Kong, and their colleagues and competitors in the United States, China, and Europe.


pages: 134 words: 41,085

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

Admiral Zheng, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, defund the police, Deng Xiaoping, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, George Floyd, global pandemic, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeremy Corbyn, Jones Act, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, McMansion, military-industrial complex, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parkinson's law, pensions crisis, QR code, rent control, Rishi Sunak, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, trade route, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Washington Consensus

Only about a third of Americans trusted Donald Trump’s medical advice.22 One poll in late April showed that 62 percent of the French had no confidence in their government’s handling of the crisis, with commentators, on both the right and the left, comparing France’s response to Covid to the country’s “strange defeat” by Germany in 1940.23 At its worst, this distrust created conspiracy theories: that the virus had been deliberately manufactured, either by China or Big Pharma or indeed the United States; that it spread through 5G towers and masks; that it was a plot to kill off the old. Bill Gates was blamed, because long before Covid he had (correctly) warned about the danger of a global pandemic in a TED talk, and invested cash in trying to find a cure. This nonsense has consequences: people have burned down scores of 5G towers, including sometimes towers that served medical facilities. A third of Americans say that they won’t get themselves vaccinated if one is found. OVERLOADED—AND OVER?

“The model of how democracy began,” says Bass, “is also a study in how it can founder and fall.”6 Britain was slow into lockdown not just because Boris Johnson was incompetent but also because of his libertarian instincts (Johnson has a bust of Pericles on his desk). In France, Macron went ahead with the elections that helped spread the virus, partly because he thought it was the right thing to do. But wait. If there was ever a test that autocracies ought to ace, it is a global pandemic. The problem is what these draconian administrations do to you the rest of the time. Moreover, there is actually nothing antidemocratic about giving elected officials more power in the short term, in order to beat a disease—providing those powers are temporary and pragmatic. Governor Cuomo’s decision to tell the National Guard to look for ventilators in New York and Johnson’s decision to instruct the army to build a hospital in East London were admirable responses to a crisis—not Covid coups.

Covid-19 was the third outbreak of a Coronavirus this century—after SARS (2003) and MERS (2012). It had also watched the damage done by swine flu in 2009, Ebola in 2014, and Zika in 2016. For a while America looked prepared. Under Bill Clinton it created a National Pharmaceutical Stockpile to store supplies. George W. Bush warned the American public to beware of a global pandemic, declaring that “if we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.” Barack Obama drew up ambitious plans to produce twenty million reusable face masks and cheap ventilators. But when the stockpile was tapped to deal with swine flu, Ebola, and Zika, the supplies were never fully replaced.


Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Black Swan, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cashless society, citizen journalism, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, congestion charging, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deglobalization, digital Maoism, digital nomad, disintermediation, driverless car, epigenetics, failed state, financial innovation, Firefox, food miles, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, hive mind, hobby farmer, industrial robot, invention of the telegraph, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, linked data, low cost airline, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, mass immigration, Northern Rock, Paradox of Choice, peak oil, pensions crisis, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, RFID, Richard Florida, self-driving car, speech recognition, synthetic biology, telepresence, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Turing test, Victor Gruen, Virgin Galactic, white flight, women in the workforce, work culture , Zipcar

I thought long and hard about including fear and anxiety in this list, but in the end I decided to add them to a list of 5 things that won’t change over the next 50 years, which appears at the very end of the book. Why these 5 key trends? Any list is inevitably highly personal and subjective, but ageing is hard to disagree with. Indeed, demographic trends are more certain than virtually anything else because short of a global pandemic, nuclear annihilation or rogue asteroids, we can be pretty sure how many people will be around in 50 years’ time based on how many are already here and on current death and fertility rates. Global connectivity is a little less certain, not least because there are some good arguments about the end of globalization and the emergence of (re)localization.

Industrial markets will split between luxury and low-cost options, with access to services like health and education, transport and 16 FUTURE FILES security similarly polarizing, depending on your ability to pay. The economic middle class will eventually disappear in most developed countries, with people either moving upwards into a new global managerial elite or downwards into a new enslaved working (or not working) class. Anxiety If “they” don’t get you, a global pandemic or high interest rates probably will. At least that’s how many people will feel in the future. Trust in institutions will all but evaporate and the speed of change will leave people longing for the past. This insecurity is to some extent generational, but whether you are 18 or 80 there will be a growing feeling of powerlessness and a continual state of anxiety that will fuel everything from an interest in nostalgia and escapism to a growth in narcissism and localization.

The average person now carries two to three times as much weight in their pockets and bags as they did two decades ago, so targeted personal fitness programs will soon have to appear unless someone invents a lightweight alternative or micro-payments become more widely accepted. Coins and banknotes could also disappear almost overnight for another reason. In all the recent talk about the consequences of a global pandemic, it appears to me that one important implication has been missed: banknotes and coins tend to be dirty, so people will refuse to handle them if they think they could be a conduit for disease. In Japan, some ATMs already heat banknotes as a precautionary hygiene measure; in an age of anxiety, “hot money” could be a very cool idea.


pages: 248 words: 73,689

Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together by Ian Goldin, Tom Lee-Devlin

15-minute city, 1960s counterculture, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brixton riot, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, cloud computing, congestion charging, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, data science, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Enrique Peñalosa, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, future of work, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Haight Ashbury, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, income per capita, Induced demand, industrial robot, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour mobility, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, Pearl River Delta, race to the bottom, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, Salesforce, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, smart meter, Snow Crash, social distancing, special economic zone, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, white flight, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

The Future of Agriculture Lessons from Brazil Making Race: The Politics and Economics of Racial Identity Contents List of Figures Preface 1 Introduction 2 Engines of Progress 3 Levelling Up 4 Divided Cities 5 Remote Work: The Threat to Cities 6 Cities, Cyberspace and the Future of Community 7 Beyond the Rich World 8 The Spectre of Disease 9 A Climate of Peril 10 Conclusion: Better Together Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index List of Figures Figure 1: More than half the world’s population now lives in cities Figure 2: Income dispersion across cities varies from country to country Figure 3: Rising sea levels will leave many cities under water Preface We live in tumultuous times. In the space of just a few years, we have witnessed a surge in populist politics across the world, a global pandemic, a spike in environmental disasters and a fraying of geopolitical relations demonstrated by the tragic war in Ukraine and escalating tensions over Taiwan. That has all occurred against a backdrop of dramatic technological changes that are fundamentally altering the way we work and relate to one another.

In 1987, on the back of these triumphs, the US Surgeon General William Stewart boldly declared: ‘The war against diseases has been won.’10 Even in poor countries, where rates of death from preventable infectious diseases are still much higher, progress has been enormous. Infectious diseases seemed poised for defeat. The devastating toll of the Covid-19 pandemic has shattered this naiveté. That global pandemic has led to the loss of over 20 million lives, a similar death toll to the First World War.11 Most of these deaths have occurred in poor countries, though rich countries have certainly not been spared, with over one million deaths in the US alone. Many of our readers will have lost loved ones, with the burden of mortality having fallen disproportionately on the elderly, medics and essential workers who were most exposed to the pandemic, particularly in the first year before vaccines became available.

About 250 people can fit into a single carriage on the New York subway, greater than the size of a typical medieval village.23 In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the global aviation industry completed 4.5 billion passenger journeys, nearly all of which departed and arrived in cities.24 Only through cities can an outbreak of a novel disease in central China cascade in a matter of weeks into a global pandemic. The Origins of Infectious Disease When our ancient ancestors transitioned from hunting and gathering to agriculture, they forever changed our relationship with the world of infectious diseases. Rising population density made it easier for microorganisms to establish themselves in multiple hosts.


pages: 561 words: 138,158

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze

2021 United States Capitol attack, air freight, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blue-collar work, Bob Geldof, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, friendly fire, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, junk bonds, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Potemkin village, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative easing, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social distancing, South China Sea, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, too big to fail, TSMC, universal basic income, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, yield curve

The British economist Lord Nicholas Stern once remarked that climate change results from history’s greatest market failure—the failure to attach a price to the costs of CO2 emissions.23 If this is true, then as the coronavirus crisis of 2020 demonstrates, the failure to build adequate defenses against global pandemics must be a close second. Even the best-funded global public health infrastructure cannot offer guarantees, but as 2020 began, the disproportion between pandemic risk and the investment in global public health was nothing short of grotesque. * * * — To talk in terms of “market failure” understates the force of the point.

Kristalina Georgieva, IMF managing director, repeated the warning she had made in Munich the week before. But what those warnings added up to was a downward revision of the IMF’s growth forecasts for China from 6 to 5.6 percent. Bad news, but hardly a disaster. That was about to change. With hindsight, we can see that it was in the third week of February that the global pandemic began in earnest. Starting on February 15, significant outbreaks were registered in South Korea, Iran, and Italy. The first death in Iran may have occurred on January 22, though it was not registered at the time.30 The regime was too busy celebrating the forty-first anniversary of the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Tehran and rigging local elections.

“For the neighborhood salesmen, for the shop owners in city centers, for domestic employees, for millions of Brazilians, Brazil cannot stop,” the ad said. Would there be casualties? Yes. As Bolsonaro remarked with a shrug: “Sorry, some will die.” On the familiar left-right political spectrum, President AMLO of Mexico is the antithesis of Bolsonaro, but even after the global pandemic was officially declared, he showed a similar disregard for the disease. Early cases were largely imported by wealthy Mexicans holidaying in America. This gave succor to the idea that the Mexican masses enjoyed immunity.54 AMLO urged audiences across the country not to be disturbed by exaggerated media reports.55 He accused conservatives of delighting in the spread of the epidemic and exaggerating failures of policy so as to destabilize his government.56 While establishment media spluttered with indignation, AMLO himself flouted scientific advice, refusing to wear a mask or to comply with social distancing.


pages: 430 words: 111,038

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera

Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, cognitive dissonance, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Etonian, European colonialism, food miles, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Neil Armstrong, period drama, phenotype, Rishi Sunak, school choice, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Shamima Begum, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce

Empire explains why we have a diaspora of millions of Britons spread around the world. Empire explains the global pretensions of our Foreign and Defence secretaries. Empire explains the feeling that we are exceptional and can go it alone when it comes to everything from Brexit to dealing with global pandemics. Empire helped to establish the position of the City of London as one of the world’s major financial centres, and also ensures that the interests of finance trump the interests of so many other groups in the twenty-first century. Empire explains how some of our richest families and institutions and cities became wealthy.

Nearly two centuries after the company’s foundation and more than 150 years after the opening of the Suez Canal, which permitted wealthy Britons to visit Asia in comfort and style, the British are the world’s fourth most enthusiastic tourists, spending $71.4 billion on tourism every year, behind Germany, the USA and China, but ahead of France, Canada and Korea.9 More than three-quarters of residents in England and Wales hold passports, according to the last Census in 2011, compared to just 40 per cent in the USA.10 In 2018, when global pandemics were merely the stuff of dystopian fiction, the British took over 71.7 million trips abroad and in the month of August 2019 alone11 British travellers made 9.4 million trips abroad.12 Five per cent of these trips were to America, which has remained a popular destination for the British since the colonies were settled in the early seventeenth century.13 But it’s not just our predilection for travel and relocation that has been shaped by our imperial history – the way we travel and live abroad has been influenced by it too.

For when it comes to the question of how our politics has been shaped and influenced by empire, there is one issue that dominates all else – a political event which has been compared to Suez by many, and which also happens to be the most divisive and contentious political issue of our lifetime: Brexit. Difficult as it has been confronting the subject of empire in the middle of a global pandemic, I have consoled myself during these challenging months that I have at least been offered respite from the enervating question of our relationship to Europe. There turns out, however, to be no escape, with the argument that our departure from the European Union has been ultimately inspired by our experience of empire being one of the most common criticisms of Brexit.


pages: 259 words: 84,261

Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World by Mo Gawdat

3D printing, accounting loophole / creative accounting, AI winter, AlphaGo, anthropic principle, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, butterfly effect, call centre, carbon footprint, cloud computing, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, digital map, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, fulfillment center, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, microplastics / micro fibres, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, OpenAI, optical character recognition, out of africa, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, subprime mortgage crisis, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, TikTok, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y2K

This is what we witnessed with COVID-19, which is infectious while lying undetected for up to two weeks. Hiding for two weeks allows it to jump from one carrier to many others before it is detected, and sparing most of its victims allows it to live longer and continue to spread. Spreading through the air we breathe while being this smart is what turned COVID-19 into a global pandemic. But intelligent as it may be among viruses, COVID-19 is superstupid when compared to the lowest level of superintelligence humanity is currently creating. And yet how has our collective intelligence served us in our handling of the COVID-19 outbreak? Our mistakes, fortunately, did not lead us to total destruction, simply because COVID-19 itself did not have that capability, at least at the time of writing this.

Our mistakes, fortunately, did not lead us to total destruction, simply because COVID-19 itself did not have that capability, at least at the time of writing this. Here are some of the glaring mistakes we made. We ignore the evangelists For years prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, scientists, public health experts, prominent public figures and global organizations warned us about the possibility of a global pandemic. They provided evidence for this and estimated the impact it would have. They made it clear that we needed to prepare for an imminent, widespread pandemic. Despite the outbreaks of SARS and other infectious diseases acting as a clear and present reminder of the possibilities, reports by the World Health Organization fell on deaf ears.

And yet here we are, decades on from Turing and Good’s warnings, still unprepared, even as the speed of development outpaces our wildest expectations. What can I say? When the warnings depict a scenario that is far removed from our common experience, our impulse is to ignore it. We’re ignoring the messengers warning of the threat of superintelligence. Just as we ignored the threat of a global pandemic. And even as the events start to unfold to confirm the validity of the warning . . . We hide the facts and react late The story of the pandemic is well known, of course, but it’s worth revisiting here because there are many potential parallels between the way we reacted to the virus and the way we are reacting to the potential threat of AI.


pages: 265 words: 93,354

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays by Phoebe Robinson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-bias training, Black Lives Matter, butterfly effect, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, defund the police, desegregation, different worldview, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, financial independence, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, independent contractor, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joan Didion, Lyft, mass incarceration, microaggression, off-the-grid, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Rosa Parks, Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, too big to fail, uber lyft, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois

Despite the tragedies of Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and a long list of other school shootings, we don’t protect our students and restrict the kinds of guns that can be purchased because some people’s allegiance is to the Second Amendment and not to the safety of our youth. Hell, look at the national response to Covid-19 in America. We can’t even come together in the face of a global pandemic. After nine months of the federal government spreading disinformation, coupled with the nation’s “me first” mentality, which resulted in many people refusing to wear a mask and socially distance, more than three thousand people were dying per day, meaning that each day we were surpassing the total deaths on 9/11.

If letter writing could keep a marriage alive during the entirety of the Civil War, then I’m sure my working relationship with Heather can thrive via the emails I send her while taking a dump. If this stance paints me as antisocial, then so be it. I just believe that working from home during a global pandemic is taxing enough—after all, we’re expected to maintain the same level of productivity we had pre-Covid—so having to carry on as though we’re not experiencing collective trauma, all the while putting on our professional bests or code-switching for the Zoom cameras is . . . well, frankly, none of us are getting paid enough to do that.

But for real, I knew nothing about trees except to say “tree” like Jodie Foster in Nell when I see one—#DeepCutReference—yet I instantly mourned the end of ignoring trees on my way home from Target after capitalizing on a two-for-six-dollars face scrub deal. Of course, that’s a trivial thing to miss, but I believe that when soul-shaking, life-changing, world-breaking things like a global pandemic happen, your brain turns to anything that can help you self-soothe. For some, that might’ve been making a box cake and eating half of it in one sitting. For others, maybe it was buying three twelve-pack rolls of toilet paper. By the way, who were all these overly confident people who knew their shit schedule for the next six weeks?


pages: 304 words: 95,306

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis by Dr Dominic Pimenta

3D printing, Boris Johnson, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, fake news, global pandemic, iterative process, lockdown, post-truth, Rubik’s Cube, school choice, Skype, social distancing, stem cell

The word jarred because, as doctors, we are always taught that “trust” simply isn’t good enough. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. But we were only doing the latter. All the while we could physically see our own future coming down the line, just two weeks ahead of us in Italy. It was obvious then that global pandemic was inevitable, and yet we weren’t reacting. That evening I wrote some of these thoughts down, at first as a thought experiment. Later, I developed it into an article covering the scale of the potential need for intensive care and PPE, the high burden of deaths, the lack of current NHS capacity and the major issues with those non-coronavirus patients who would not get looked after for every COVID patient that came in.4 It’s almost difficult to imagine what it was like writing down the numbers that we had been talking about in the abstract for weeks prior.

There are now two obvious and inescapable truths – that the virus can no longer be contained, because we aren’t testing or finding contacts anymore, and that without widespread measures it will continue to double every two to three days. And yet still nothing changes. It occurs to me then, puffing in my running gear and looking at the collective journalism of our country spread before me, that a global pandemic is now inevitable. At least the tone of the conversation has changed – there is some realization of the scale of this disaster – but it is no less ill-thought through. The next tabloid reads “Govt will call up retired medics to fight coronavirus”. A group of men and women in a high-risk group, coming back to a service they’ve only just, I can only assume happily, retired from.

She’d sweep the floors during a hurricane. “No, Beck, come now. We don’t know when we’ll be allowed to travel next afterwards.” “Okay, okay. I’ll come today. You finally get what you want.” “To get you to live in our attic, and to stop working at the spin studio and focus on your music?” “Yes.” “And all it took was a global pandemic.” Beck laughs, and rings off. In the midst of the chaos it’s a cheering thought, to know that Dilsan and Beck will be together, especially as they get on so well. I’ll know that Beck is safe and looked after, the kids can see their Aunty “Buckie”, as Ayla is wont to call her, and I can stop worrying about her being alone in the midst of the pandemic


pages: 491 words: 131,769

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global reserve currency, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paradox of Choice, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price stability, principal–agent problem, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, unorthodox policies, value at risk, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, Yom Kippur War

Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Introduction Chapter 1 - The White Swan Chapter 2 - Crisis Economists Chapter 3 - Plate Tectonics Chapter 4 - Things Fall Apart Chapter 5 - Global Pandemics Chapter 6 - The Last Resort Chapter 7 - Spend More, Tax Less? Chapter 8 - First Steps Chapter 9 - Radical Remedies Chapter 10 - Fault Lines Conclusion Outlook Acknowledgments NOTES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX ALSO BY NOURIEL ROUBINI New International Financial Architecture (with Marc Uzan) Bailouts or Bail-Ins? Responding to Financial Crisis in Emerging Economies (with Brad Setser) Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy (with Alberto Alesina and Gerald D.

Since banks were not lending to each other or to nonbank financial firms or even to nonfinancial corporate firms, central banks were forced to become lenders of first, last, and only resort. The storm engendered little in the way of the “creative destruction” that Joseph Schumpeter would have celebrated. Instead, strong and weak alike remained in a state of suspended animation, awaiting the final reckoning. Chapter 5 Global Pandemics An old saying in financial markets has it that “when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.” However clichéd, that observation contains plenty of truth: the United States is the biggest, most powerful economy in the world, and when it gets sick, countries that depend on its insatiable demand for everything from raw commodities to finished consumer goods find themselves in trouble too.

However clichéd, that observation contains plenty of truth: the United States is the biggest, most powerful economy in the world, and when it gets sick, countries that depend on its insatiable demand for everything from raw commodities to finished consumer goods find themselves in trouble too. This dynamic takes on dangerous potency in times of financial crisis. An outbreak of some financial disease in the world’s economic powerhouse can swiftly become a devastating global pandemic. A crash in the stock market, the failure of a big bank, or some other unexpected collapse at the epicenter of global finance can become a countrywide panic and then a worldwide disaster. It’s a scenario that has played out many times, whether in Britain in the nineteenth century or in the United States since that time.


pages: 296 words: 96,568

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus by Sarah Gilbert, Catherine Green

Boris Johnson, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, global pandemic, imposter syndrome, lockdown, lone genius, profit motive, Skype, social distancing, TikTok

Disease X was a placeholder, representing a future, hypothetical disease. No one knew what the disease would be, or when it would emerge, but experts agreed that the emergence of something, sometime soon, was inevitable. Looking back now, it’s interesting to see that then, the planning was for an epidemic, meaning an outbreak in one geographical area – but not a global pandemic. Nonetheless, the very act of putting Disease X on the list was an important recognition of the need to prepare for pathogens we don’t yet know, as well as the ones we do. So how could we prepare for a disease that we don’t yet know about? How do you design a vaccine against an unknown pathogen?

In the committee room in the Palace of Westminster I spoke about the vaccine development work we were doing in Oxford, how it followed on from other work we had done on the MERS vaccine, and why it was both possible and essential to proceed very quickly. I also said that we needed funding for the work as a matter of urgency. The following day, 11 March, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. The next few weeks were some of the most hectic and surreal of my life. I was running in parallel half a dozen stages of vaccine development that would usually happen over years and in sequence. At the same time we were starting to attract a lot of media interest, setting up a deal with big pharma, and going into lockdown.

We expected to be making at least two more, but that number would only go up as more ‘variants of concern’ were identified. Although it felt like an end to the pandemic could be in sight with the rapid vaccine roll-out, it also felt like missteps over new variants could set us back again. I was not sure the team could take that. Our resilience was close to crumbling. — There will be a next time. The next global pandemic will come. And well before the start of 2021 we were thinking about what we needed to do to be ready for it. But it also became clear in the early months of 2021, as the world started to roll out our vaccine and others, that we were not finished with SARS-CoV-2, and it was not finished with us.


pages: 263 words: 77,786

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon footprint, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, gun show loophole, impact investing, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge worker, lockdown, London Whale, low interest rates, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, natural language processing, new economy, old-boy network, price mechanism, profit maximization, remote working, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

(Chuyuan later came under some criticism for suggesting his company’s herbal medicine could stave off the disease.) But unknown to the Davos crowd, the first case had already arrived within the United States—later confirmed in Washington state on January 21. The virus hit southern Europe in force in February, and by March, it was declared a global pandemic. The “global society,” long heralded as a supreme advance of the modern era, aided the spread of the disease. In the coming weeks travel bans were announced, and when the spread continued, lockdowns began. California was the first with a statewide stay-at-home order. On the East Coast, New York state became the epicenter of the coronavirus, with Governor Andrew Cuomo ordering all nonessential businesses closed.

He was feeling the pressures around personal protective equipment, the N95 masks in particular. 3M had started ramping up its manufacturing of PPE before it hit the American public that the need was desperate here at home. Roman explained: “Coming out of SARS, we had developed a strategy to have idle capacity available for the next pandemic. We didn’t anticipate a global pandemic like we’re facing with COVID-19. We responded and have been ramping up capacity ever since.”12 The priorities were clear to his leadership: “Protect our employees, so we could keep executing, fight the pandemic from every angle, and deliver for our customers and shareholders, as we went through the uncertainty that we were facing.

NO LOSS OF MOMENTUM Competition is the core of the free market economy. It is competition that drives companies to improve quality and reduce prices, to become more efficient, to innovate. Competition is the magic that makes capitalist economies successful. But solving society’s biggest problems—like a global pandemic—requires cooperation as well as competition. The scientists at pharmaceutical companies were competing with each other to be the first to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID. But they also were sharing data, knowledge, and even their facilities in ways that never would have been imaginable before the pandemic.


Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

This book is invaluable right now, a must-read for anyone working to dismantle prisons and borders, and to end poverty and war.” —Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) “As communities and social movements scramble to respond to the threat of a globalized far-right against the apocalyptic backdrop of a global pandemic and impending ecological disaster, Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule reminds us of how we got here. With clinical precision, Walia unravels the genealogies and histories of border militarization, incarceration, and imperialism, laying bare the webs of domination and exploitation that threaten the poor and vulnerable everywhere, from those incarcerated in Australia’s offshore immigration camps to the victims of drone warfare in Yemen.

My material privileges are built atop the unceded jurisdictions of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations and, in continuities of oppression, also the extracted lands, exploited labor, and expendable lives of many others locally and globally. This book is in service to dismantling the violences we are bound up in and to imagining relations and worlds anew. Foreword I write these words amid a global pandemic. The twenty-four-hour news cycle is saturated with images of suffering and death as well as a parade of healthcare professionals recruited to share stories from the front lines or impart expert opinion. These workers are often South Asian, Latinx, Caribbean, Filipino, and African American, many presumably immigrants or children of immigrants.

After years of watching footage of unarmed Black people beaten and killed by police for walking, loitering, running, standing in front of their homes, showing insufficient deference, protecting their kids, or being a kid, these scenes of white men brandishing AR-15s in the face of police and government officials and evading jail, injury, or death begs incredulity. Harsha Walia’s incisive and prescient book, Border and Rule, could not have been timelier. She reminds us that these wars are not new. This global pandemic is just the latest manifestation of capitalism’s five-hundred-year war on the earth by means of land enclosure, dispossession, occupation, extraction, exploitation, commodification, consumption, destruction, pollution, immiseration, and oppressive forms of governance. It is war on the people in the form of military violence, executed in the name of “security”—securing resources, borders, life, and “liberty” against dictators, terrorists, and communists.


pages: 385 words: 112,842

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims

air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, big-box store, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, book scanning, business logic, business process, call centre, cloud computing, company town, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, data science, Dava Sobel, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital twin, Donald Trump, easy for humans, difficult for computers, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hive mind, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, intermodal, inventory management, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kiva Systems, level 1 cache, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, machine readable, Malacca Straits, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, Nomadland, Ocado, operation paperclip, Panamax, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, polynesian navigation, post-Panamax, random stow, ride hailing / ride sharing, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Rodney Brooks, rubber-tired gantry crane, scientific management, self-driving car, sensor fusion, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skunkworks, social distancing, South China Sea, special economic zone, spinning jenny, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, workplace surveillance

While the node in the supply chains of Asia I was about to tour had already been growing in importance and was fast becoming something like the next China—a hub of low-cost manufacturing rapidly transforming into a hot spot of high-tech expertise—what I couldn’t have predicted was that the black swan of the coronavirus was about to make everything I would see that day, and in the days following, so much more important. Just as the Saigon River on which we traveled had shifted its course across the Mekong Delta countless times before, eradicating one shoreline as it built up another, its path dictated by forces beyond human scale, the supply chains that had until the global pandemic of 2020 seemed adequate were about to whipsaw into new configurations, a flood of goods reshaping them to fresh and urgent needs. The day I stepped from our yellow speedboat onto the concrete pier of Cai Mep International Terminal, part of one of the largest container ports in Southeast Asia, shipping containers in its yard contained a not insignificant portion of the goods that people, businesses, and hospitals across the globe would be panic-buying in the months ahead.

After racking up more than seven years of time at sea, broken up by time ashore to attend maritime university, Jeff, as he likes to be called, was on his final tour on a container ship. Jeff has black hair, a disarmingly boyish face, and nearly half a million subscribers on YouTube, where he posts videos about life at sea. He was supposed to be on board the Brussels, which circumnavigates Earth every seventy-seven days, for just six months. Thanks to the global pandemic, he would stay on the ship for nearly a year. Under normal circumstances, containerized shipping companies exchange 150,000 sailors every month, pulling as many off ships as they put on, for a total movement of 300,000 people. But when Covid-19 struck, the companies invoked the legal principle of force majeure—extraordinary circumstances—to keep officers, captains, and crew on board their ships until ports allowed sailors to disembark again and cross-border travel on international flights could be worked out.

By this point, the e-commerce giant was already sold out of toilet paper and dozens of other household goods. A study published by a pair of economists in January 2021 will find that all over the world, panic buying reached its highest intensity in the week after governments declared restrictions on movement within a state or country. It turns out this USB charger, manufactured when the global pandemic had yet to start, put on a ship just as China began its shutdowns, ordered from Amazon just today, wasn’t an idle purchase. It was one tiny element of the mass shift in the global economy from services to goods, from being out in the world to working, entertaining, and learning from home. It’s just a tiny, inexpensive gadget, but it’s also an embodiment of the journey of billions of dollars’ worth of other goods, all part of a tsunami of creative destruction that has permanently transformed the way we live.


pages: 370 words: 112,809

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future by Orly Lobel

2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, barriers to entry, basic income, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Black Lives Matter, Boston Dynamics, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital map, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Grace Hopper, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, iterative process, job automation, Lao Tzu, large language model, lockdown, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, microaggression, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, occupational segregation, old-boy network, OpenAI, openstreetmap, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, price discrimination, publish or perish, QR code, randomized controlled trial, remote working, risk tolerance, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Turing test, universal basic income, Wall-E, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, work culture , you are the product

To change what is wrong, we need to imagine what a world that is human made, embracing technology for good, can look like. Examples of using AI for such good are all around us. Machine learning shows promise for addressing intractable challenges from poverty to climate change to ocean pollution to global pandemics. The stories of those who have skin in the game—who are doing good and adding diversity, all while doing well in the field—can motivate the next generation to join in. In debates about the future of technology, I see how scholars are far more willing to accept the role of AI in areas such as medicine, climate studies, and environmental sustainability—which they perceive as more purely scientific—than in other areas such as employment, social justice, domestic violence, and equal pay.

She writes, “In a world where the commonly held wisdom is that technology isolates us, it’s worth considering another side of the story.”4 Newman’s love letter to Siri is incredibly sweet and tender. Her book captures not only the unique challenges of raising a child with developmental differences, but also the universal challenges we face in the modern world, including, of course, isolation because of a global pandemic or other natural disaster. Even amid our cautiousness and at times trepidation, we should celebrate the benefits of chatbots and their potential to do good. They help us remember things, save us time, and alleviate life’s burdens, even lessen our loneliness. At the same time, a feminist examination of the chatbot phenomenon also needs to grapple with the market’s thirst for artificial housewives—how it started, how it’s going, and how we can shape AI to better emulate tomorrow’s society rather than yesterday’s.

A dramatic population gap has resulted: it is predicted that by 2030, China will have over 30 million more men than women, which means that countless men will end up lonely and isolated, facing barriers to starting human relationships. All over the world, the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated starkly how socially isolated we can become, and the mental health problems that can ensue. The loneliness and isolation of a global pandemic offer a poignant use case for the value of having robots (sexual and otherwise) in our homes. In an interview with Forbes, the CEO of Realbotix and creator of the sex robot Harmony claimed that sales were 75 percent higher than they were before the pandemic.14 Another possible benefit of sex robots is a safer sex industry.


pages: 138 words: 40,525

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook by Extinction Rebellion

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, banks create money, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, Colonization of Mars, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, drug harm reduction, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, feminist movement, full employment, Gail Bradbrook, gig economy, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, mass immigration, negative emissions, Peter Thiel, place-making, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, retail therapy, rewilding, Sam Altman, smart grid, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, the scientific method, union organizing, urban sprawl, wealth creators

Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape. There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It’s less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new a state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability and complexity.

In essence, zero-carbon targets save cities by starting to untangle the energy system that keeps capitalism, and our ceaseless growth paradigm, going. That’s the big challenge. The second big area of action is transport. This is about the urgent task of how and why we need to lock down city car culture. Almost all modern ills can be understood through the rise of the private fossil-fuel-powered automobile: unnecessary road deaths, the global pandemic of urban air pollution, mounting greenhouse-gas emissions, geopolitical wars, the concentration of corporate wealth and mounting consumer debt, depression, status anxiety, obesity, alienated streetscapes, the decline of vibrant public life and the corrosive effects of individualism. We simply need to lock down city car culture: privatized, corporate-led, fossil-fuel-hungry automobile dependency, and growth-based planning.


The Atlas of Disease by Sandra Hempel

clean water, coronavirus, Easter island, Edward Jenner, global pandemic, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, out of africa, trade route, wikimedia commons

Equally, none of the 450 inmates of the local workhouse fell ill. The workhouse had its own water supply and never used the pump. Modern outbreaks During the second half of the nineteenth century, when people were provided with efficient sewers and clean drinking water, cholera largely disappeared in the developed world and the great global pandemics were consigned to history. However, the disease continues to be a threat when sanitary conditions are poor in countries where it is endemic, particularly when the infrastructure is damaged by natural disasters or war. In 1961 a new, less deadly strain of the bacterium, known as El Tor, caused a pandemic that started in Indonesia and spread to Bangladesh, India, the Middle East, North Africa and by 1973 into Italy.

Transmission Transmitted to humans by wild animals, then spreads from person to person through body fluids Symptoms Fever, severe headache, muscle pain, weakness, fatigue, diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain, haemorrhaging Incidence and deaths 28,616 cases in the 2014–16 epidemic and 11,310 deaths. Average case fatality rate is around 50 per cent. Prevalence Two isolated outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the global pandemic of 2014–16 Prevention In affected areas, avoid contact with: body fluids; infected medical equipment and bedding, and bats and non-human primates and bush meat from these animals Treatment No proven treatment but treatments for different symptoms and support to maintain the body’s functions Global strategy Fast containment of outbreaks combined with health education for health workers and general population An illustration of a cross-section through an ebola virus particle.


pages: 288 words: 85,073

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund

"World Economic Forum" Davos, animal electricity, clean water, colonial rule, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, fake news, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, global pandemic, Hans Rosling, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), jimmy wales, linked data, lone genius, microcredit, purchasing power parity, revenue passenger mile, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Walter Mischel

Either way, we stop thinking, give in to our instincts, and make bad decisions. The Five Global Risks We Should Worry About I do not deny that there are pressing global risks we need to address. I am not an optimist painting the world in pink. I don’t get calm by looking away from problems. The five that concern me most are the risks of global pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change, and extreme poverty. Why is it these problems that cause me most concern? Because they are quite likely to happen: the first three have all happened before and the other two are happening now; and because each has the potential to cause mass suffering either directly or indirectly by pausing human progress for many years or decades.

It is the probability that something we have not yet even thought of will cause terrible suffering and devastation. That is a sobering thought. While it is truly pointless worrying about something unknown that we can do nothing about, we must also stay curious and alert to new risks, so that we can respond to them.) Global Pandemic The Spanish flu that spread across the world in the wake of the First World War killed 50 million people—more people than the war had, although that was partly because the populations were already weakened after four years of war. As a result, global life expectancy fell by ten years, from 33 to 23, as you can see from the dip in the curve here.

For a fact-based view of a longer list of major risks, see Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years, by Smil (2008). For those who find numbers calming, this is where you will find the big picture of the proportional risks and uncertainties of all kinds of possible fatal discontinuities. See gapm.io/furgr. The risk of global pandemic. A small version of Spanish flu is more likely than a large one; see Smil (2008). While we should work against the obscene overuse of antibiotics in the meat industry—see WHO[14]—at the same time we must be careful not to make the mistake we made with DDT and become overprotective. Antibiotics could save even more lives if they were even less expensive.


pages: 309 words: 81,243

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent by Ben Shapiro

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, defund the police, delayed gratification, deplatforming, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Herbert Marcuse, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, Jon Ronson, Kevin Roose, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, microaggression, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, obamacare, Overton Window, Parler "social media", Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steven Pinker, Susan Wojcicki, tech bro, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, War on Poverty, yellow journalism

And each element of the intersectional agenda is becoming increasingly more radical. During the 2020 election cycle, Democrats, afraid of alienating black Americans, ignored the rioting and looting associated with Black Lives Matter protests; embraced the ideological insanity of CRT; indulged mass protests against police in the middle of a global pandemic; and fudged on whether they were in favor of defunding the police as crime rates spiked. Afraid of alienating LGBT Americans, Democrats embraced the most radical elements of gender theory, including approval of children transitioning sex; they pressured social media companies to punish Americans for “misgendering”; they vowed to crack down on religious practice in the name of supposed LGBT rights.

After all, science has a method, a way of distinguishing truth from falsehood; science is designed to uncover objective truths rather than to wallow in subjective perceptions of victimization. Science should have been at the bleeding edge of the pushback. Instead, science surrendered, too. Next, we’ll take a look at why. Chapter 4 How Science™ Defeated Actual Science Two thousand twenty was a banner year for science. In the midst of a global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus, scientists in laboratories across the world stepped into the breach. They researched the most effective methods of slowing the virus’s spread. They developed new therapeutics designed to reduce death rates, and researched new applications of already-existent drugs.

But authoritarian leftist politicians could count on members of the public health establishment to back their play, manufacturing anti-scientific narratives in the name of science. More than one thousand “public health specialists” signed an open letter supporting the largest protests in American history in the middle of a global pandemic, claiming that such protests were “vital to the national public health,” and adding, “This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-at-home orders.” Infectious-disease expert Ranu S. Dhillon of Harvard Medical School told The New York Times, “Protesting against systemic injustice that is contributing directly to this pandemic is essential.


pages: 317 words: 87,048

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

One was the core QAnon followers, whose belief system often became even more profoundly strange. Another formed the global #SaveTheChildren movement – perhaps the most well-meaning and yet malign global trend of the internet era. But it was the third that propelled ideas QAnon had taken on into the stratosphere – a global pandemic, begun in China, which damaged Donald Trump’s electability and saw Joe Biden enter the White House was just the breakthrough any conspiracy theory needed. We might hear the name ‘QAnon’ less than we used to. But that’s just in the same way that it’s easier to see a smaller mountain than a larger one, or to see more of an iceberg that’s far away.

It is in fact, in the interests of full disclosure, so inescapable that it also funds the global health reporting team at my employer, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and so paid part of my salary as Global Editor there (I was employed by TBIJ while writing this book, but will have left by the time you are reading it).22 That means that if anyone is looking for a Gates Foundation connection to a particular public health issue, they will find it. On a basic level, Bill Gates had publicly warned about the risk of a global pandemic long before Covid-19 happened. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2017, Gates said: Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year. And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years.

(The same study revealed that 21 per cent of Republican voters said they had a favourable view of QAnon.)68 A separate US poll by PRRI that same month found a strong and overt connection between QAnon and anti-vaccination sentiment. Forty-two per cent of vaccine refusers told pollsters they also believed in QAnon, while 22 per cent of those describing themselves as vaccine hesitant said they believed Q.69 The digital pandemic had, beyond the point of doubt, become part of a real-world global health emergency. Global pandemic, global radicalisation The levels of oddness and denial among those who come to regularly stage anti-lockdown or anti-vaccine protests can be truly surreal, with an often-familiar cast of characters with tenuous connections to the corridors of power who can then allude to familiarity with the workings of the state to online and offline followers.


pages: 371 words: 122,273

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency by Vicky Spratt

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, garden city movement, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, housing crisis, Housing First, illegal immigration, income inequality, Induced demand, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land value tax, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, negative equity, Overton Window, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, quantitative easing, rent control, Right to Buy, Rishi Sunak, Rutger Bregman, side hustle, social distancing, stop buying avocado toast, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

Out of Options Epilogue Dwelling in Possibility Glossary of the Housing Crisis Notes Further Reading Acknowledgements Index Copyright Author’s Note This is a work of non-fiction written between 2017 and early 2022, drawn from five years of research. When I began, Britain had just voted to leave the European Union and was embarking on the process of Brexit. As I finished, a global pandemic spread, making people’s homes into a frontline defence amid a major public health crisis and, in doing so, revealed that home was not a very safe place for some people. During that period, it felt at times as though the country was, at once, imploding and exploding. While some British people saw their dream – independence from Eurocracy – realised, others felt that just over half of the country had voted for something they did not want but would have to live with.

The Chancellor’s support package made no mention of financial assistance for anyone who lost their job and fell into rent debt to their landlord as a result, but instead a flimsy suggestion that landlords – who could access mortgage holidays – should be ‘flexible’ and ‘negotiate’ with renters whose finances were damaged. That is how Anthony – like many others – found himself caught in the crosshairs of two social and economic disasters: a global pandemic and a housing emergency. If you do not own your own home in Britain, precarity is a fact of life. It comes in the form of rent rises, eviction notices and knowing that, ultimately, your landlord has control over the one place in the world you should feel safe. Banking on Housing My grandparents, though they had the chance to, didn’t buy their flat in Dorrington Court through Right to Buy.

As I moved my thumb across the screen, I noticed that the estate agent in question had borrowed a quote from a philosopher I return to regularly for his human and poetic descriptions of home, Gaston Bachelard: The house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. But if they are unaffordable, houses are not places where people can dream, let alone live in peace. We all need somewhere affordable to live, but it is our collective home – the state – which should provide for all eventualities. It took a global pandemic to remind us that human society is a delicate ecosystem: overcrowding spreads disease, bad housing makes people sick. Similarly, the slightest temperature rise in one corner of the housing market risks infecting other parts of the economy – how much we spend on housing dictates how much disposable income we have, how much we can save, how much we can borrow and how well we fare if we fall on hard times.


pages: 569 words: 165,510

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business climate, call centre, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, first-past-the-post, food desert, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, meme stock, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, Paris climate accords, pension reform, QAnon, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, statistical model, Steve Bannon, The Chicago School, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, young professional

But it would not be the kind of opponent that I had in mind during my impeachment testimony. 13 The Horrible Year In the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s first impeachment trial came more vulnerabilities. Without any doubt, 2020 was a horrible year—and not just because of dramatic political upheavals that were bookended by two presidential impeachments. January 2020 saw a novel coronavirus, COVID-19, turn into a global pandemic. It was the worst health crisis in a century, since the influenza pandemic of 1918. Other emergencies exacerbated and magnified its effects. The year was marked by the largest number of hurricanes on record battering the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean. There were widespread wildfires in California, droughts and floods across other parts of the country.

Lost generations in all three countries foresaw nothing but persistent disadvantage and lack of opportunity and wanted someone, preferably some strongman, to fix things for them with a series of bold moves. The strongmen had arrived, but the rest of the populist dream had gone unfulfilled. And now life was upended. Everyone was imperiled by a deadly disease. The global pandemic was another shock to fragile systems, a negative force multiplier that compounded preexisting problems. If ever there was proof that the decline of opportunity posed an existential threat, this was it. The Populists’ Pandemic Populist governments are, almost by definition, ill-suited to handle complex problems of governance.

Our inability to get our act together on most major policy issues (the fifth risk of incompetence and the failure of project management) hindered the projection of American soft power, essentially the power of our example. As a result, we reduced our overall global competitiveness with rising powers such as China. Political polarization is ultimately a national security threat as well as a domestic challenge. It is a barrier to the collective action necessary for combating catastrophes like global pandemics, mitigating the effects of climate change, and, as I saw in my time at the White House, thwarting external threats from adversaries such as Russia. In the Trump administration, every peril was politicized. It was turned into fodder for personal gain and partisan games. Successive national security advisers, cabinet members, and their professional staffs were unable to mount a coherent response or defense to a national security threat in the face of personalized, chaotic, and at times simply opportunistic policymaking at the top.


pages: 172 words: 50,777

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

By 2016 we were in what the World Economic Forum called the famous ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, which predicted, correctly, a massive realignment in the relationships between humans and machines. This was the era when the concept of mindfulness and the desire to switch off became mainstream; reskilling became a major preoccupation and the idea of well-being at work acknowledged the epidemic of work-related stress. But no one anticipated the black swan event of a global pandemic, let alone prepared for it. Far from it. This made 2019 the last year of modern working life as it had been known since 1945. And so we come to today, to the fourth phase of work, the Nowhere Office Years, which is the subject of this book. Beginning in 2020, it represents the working era in which several shifts are happening at once.

., ‘The Cost of Work-Related Stress to Society: A Systematic Review’, http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/30155/1/PubSub7909_Hassard.pdf; also Jean-Pierre Brun, ‘Work-Related Stress: Scientific Evidence-Base of Risk Factors, Prevention And Costs’, WHO, 13 March 2007, https://www.who.int/occupational_health/topics/brunpres0307.pdf; see also Gallup State of the Global Workplace report, ‘A Global Pandemic and Its Impact on Global Engagement, Stress and the Workforce’, Gallup, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx; and John M. Ivancevich, Michael T. Matteson, and Edward P. Richards, ‘Who’s Liable for Stress on the Job?’, Harvard Business Review, March 1985, https://hbr.org/1985/03/whos-liable-for-stress-on-the-job 8.


pages: 372 words: 101,678

Lessons from the Titans: What Companies in the New Economy Can Learn from the Great Industrial Giants to Drive Sustainable Success by Scott Davis, Carter Copeland, Rob Wertheimer

3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, airport security, asset light, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Boeing 747, business cycle, business process, clean water, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, data science, disruptive innovation, Elisha Otis, Elon Musk, factory automation, fail fast, financial engineering, Ford Model T, global pandemic, hydraulic fracturing, Internet of things, iterative process, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, low cost airline, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, megacity, Michael Milken, Network effects, new economy, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, random walk, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skunkworks, software is eating the world, strikebreaker, tech billionaire, TED Talk, Toyota Production System, Uber for X, value engineering, warehouse automation, WeWork, winner-take-all economy

The NMA project was dropped as part of a broader rethinking of what future product development processes should look like, and PFS was eliminated from the vocabulary of those in supply chain–facing roles. Boeing realized the need to focus on rebuilding trust with the stakeholder groups (regulators, employees, suppliers, the flying public) that had taken a backseat to shareholders for an extended period of time. Sadly, these actions were lost in the noise of the COVID-19 global pandemic, which only two months into Calhoun’s tenure called the company’s future into question. To continue to produce MAX aircraft during the grounding, Boeing took on billions of dollars in debt and swung from a position of net cash to a position of net debt for the first time since the 787 crisis earlier in the decade.

In hindsight, Boeing’s bet on a quick recovery was incredibly unlucky and ill-advised, and it left the company seeking government support, something unimaginable when the company’s stock was soaring to all-time highs just before the MAX crisis only a year earlier. The swing from the world’s most valuable industrial company to one whose liquidity and solvency were being questioned in such a short period of time is still mind-boggling. While almost no one foresaw the extent of the impact that a global pandemic could have on the market for airplanes, it undoubtedly will redefine how everyone evaluates the future. And just like the crises that preceded it, it will forever reshape how the company and all its stakeholders evaluate risk. POSTMORTEM Over much of the last three decades, Boeing has struggled to effectively balance the needs of key stakeholder groups, overemphasizing the importance of one or two for extended periods of time.

Drawing the lines on customer data use and weighing them against the pursuit of profit and higher share prices is a similar evaluation. It’s inevitable that the influence of nonfinancial and nonemployee stakeholders will only continue to rise in the future. And the industry is not immune from its own megacrisis. In fact, cybersecurity threats for Big Tech could prove to be the equivalent of a global pandemic for industrial firms and travel-focused companies. Boeing’s task in the 2020s is now unprecedented. Successfully recovering from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic dominates the focus in the short term. Finding a stable financial position and building a sufficient cash buffer for future crises will inevitably be a primary focus for several years.


pages: 347 words: 103,518

The Stolen Year by Anya Kamenetz

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Anthropocene, basic income, Black Lives Matter, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, food desert, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, helicopter parent, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, Kintsugi, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Minecraft, moral panic, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, rent stabilization, risk tolerance, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

She doesn’t find it “helpful” to dwell on feelings. She’s a problem solver. She has the knowledge and research skills to fuel endless cycles of anxiety and planning, so she tries to avoid spiraling. “My rabbit holes are deep,” she says. “But they’re not frequent, because I go places people don’t even know.” But with a looming global pandemic, she had no choice. “I started figuring out—I started playing a game in my mind. How do you quarantine your family from you if you’re positive or even exposed? And I started thinking about the floors of my house and the rooms and the bathrooms—and most specifically I want to protect my youngest.”

Her two-year-old daughter’s childcare center closed. And her husband’s also working full-time from home. And her mother-in-law kept sort of telling her, oh, you should be enjoying this time with your daughter, this is a special time. This is such a gift to have this extra time with your daughter.” Record scratch. It’s a global pandemic! Not a vacation! “Hearing that from her mother-in-law and hearing that from other people in her life just gave her a sense of doubt and made her feel like a failure as a mother, and then also thinking about the work that she would normally be able to get done, feeling like a failure as a worker as well.”

She would sit up in bed for her school’s roll call on the computer, and then go back to sleep. Gradually she filled the wall behind her bed with detailed pencil drawings on paper. One of them shows a girl sitting on her bed with arms crossed, looking out the window. There is a padlock on the frame. “Global Pandemic! Schools Cancelled!” it says. Dayana started talking to the school psychologist over Google Meet. In the morning and the evening she played nature sounds and did breathing exercises. And she wrote, publishing pieces in a student journal. “Writing poetry and stories have been a great help to me.


pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

He called Yaneer Bar-Yam, a friend and expert in complexity theory—the broad, interdisciplinary study of interactions within and among systems ranging from cells to forests to the global climate—and the disturbing dynamics of pandemics in the modern world. “You’ve got to pay attention to what’s going on in Wuhan,” Taleb told him. Bar-Yam agreed. Founder of an elite research center called the New England Complex Systems Institute, or NECSI, Bar-Yam had for years been growing progressively worried about the outbreak of a global pandemic. He’d worked with the United Nations on the Ebola virus and saw how it had nearly jumped well beyond Africa’s borders. In 2016, he’d written a report called Transition to Extinction: Pandemics in a Connected World. Highly fatal pathogens tend to spread quickly at first, then burn out as they kill all their hosts.

In a March 2020 article about Feigl-Ding’s Twitter post and the backlash it sparked, New York magazine’s David Wallace-Wells observed that if the rest of the world had responded to the outbreak with the same measure of fear and apprehension early on, it would have been much better off. “As I’ve written before about climate change, when the news is alarming, the only responsible response is to be alarmed—and raise alarm,” he wrote. “And like runaway climate change, the threat of a global pandemic, which graybeards have been warning about for years, is a reminder that we should always build public policy around the precautionary principle, rather than waiting until uncontestable and inarguable evidence arrives that action is necessary. If we wait that long, it will always be too late.” Among those who took the new estimate very seriously was Nassim Taleb.

Literal flames were frying its forests. I met Litterman in Washington, D.C., hours after his Senate testimony. It would be my last face-to-face meeting for months—as well as his—as lockdowns gripped the country in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Litterman told me he worried the Covid-19 virus would soon become a global pandemic, and he was right. “It’s a perfect example of when you have a risk-management problem—it’s urgent, you don’t know how much time you have,” he said. “With coronavirus, we wasted so many weeks.” The same was true for the climate. “We’ve got to slam on the brakes,” he said, referring to carbon emissions—and his experience with the flaming tanker.


Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming media services were booming, a welcome distraction from the grim news outside. Bandwidth consumption catapulted to such enormous levels that telecommunications carriers were putting caps on streams and downgrading video quality to ensure the internet didn’t overload. Miraculously, it all hung together, and for that you were grateful. But the global pandemic also accentuated all of social media’s shortcomings. Cybercrime and data breaches also skyrocketed as bad actors capitalized on millions of people working from home, their kitchen routers and jerry-rigged network setups never designed to handle sensitive communications. In spite of efforts by social media platforms to remove misleading information and point their users to credible health sources, disinformation was everywhere, sometimes consumed with terrible effects.

Over half of the world’s population is not yet connected to the internet, but that is changing fast. It’s difficult to measure with precision the carbon emissions and overall energy consumption related to our communications ecosystem, but it’s fair to say they’re large and growing. Prior to the global pandemic, I had seen references to estimates that placed the internet’s energy and carbon footprints on a par with, or even exceeding, the airline industry’s. One study suggests that the world’s communications ecosystem currently consumes approximately 7 percent of global electricity, a number that could increase to as much as 21 percent by 2030.344 A study by the American Coal Association (strange, I know) estimated that a smartphone streaming an hour of video on a weekly basis uses more power annually than a new refrigerator.345 Some have tried to break down the energy consumption and carbon emissions by individual digital routines, to make it easier to comprehend.

What if everyone quite literally unplugged? How would we then manage ourselves, our social relationships, our problems, and our politics? How would we address, to borrow a phrase from John Dewey, “the public and its problems” if the “public” had no means to exchange information and communicate? And if the global pandemic showed us anything, it is that the “public” is now truly planetary in scope and scale. Thanks to hundreds of years of modern industrial technological development, we now live in a “global village” (to borrow McLuhan’s phrasing).397 There’s no turning back. Complex interdependence binds us together in a single habitat that systems theorist and futurist Buckminster Fuller once aptly called “Spaceship Earth.”398 We’re in this together, for better or for worse.


pages: 322 words: 106,663

Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo by Rebecca Walker

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, call centre, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, export processing zone, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hustle culture, impact investing, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, microaggression, neurotypical, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Rana Plaza, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, TED Talk, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, Y Combinator

I won’t list all the stories told here, all the burdens laid down, but I will say that they span the gamut from the perils of technocracy to the financial implications of transgender identity, from the loss of material inheritance to the discovery of spiritual wealth, from fat as a financial issue to foster parenting as an act of resistance. It is a wonderful and inspiring collection, and I love it more, now that it is finished, than I ever thought I could. I am heartened to imagine how these stories might impact the global discussion of women and money in the shadow of a global pandemic that has hit women, and especially women of color, extraordinarily hard. To all who find themselves here I say: may these essays, these voices, help you write your own story of money, and put to rest forever the thought that you have to carry it alone. REBECCA WALKER Los Angeles, California April 2021 ONLY RICOS HAVE CREDIT DAISY HERNÁNDEZ AT FIFTEEN, I land my first job.

I understood the challenges of community violence because I’d seen it myself; of single-parent households and immigration and racism because I’d known them myself; of the incredible opportunity of a good education because I’d been blessed with one myself. But I’d been healthy, had never questioned my very ability to live and breathe. Until suddenly I couldn’t. I’m not 100 percent better. But I’m better enough—and in a global pandemic, when no one’s ability to breathe can be taken for granted, better enough is just fine. I’m better enough to have resumed the activities that bring me joy, including exercise and backpacking trips. I’m better enough to have reengaged with my work—both job and writing—with a renewed sense of purpose.

Watching sponsorship inquiries trickle to nothing, I moved my moneymaking endeavors away from social media. And I moved my home from California to the land where I grew up, on Maui, to live in a two-hundred-square-foot studio. Here, I am confronted daily with questions of what it means to be a white settler living (and making money) on occupied Native Hawaiian land, particularly during a global pandemic and financial crisis. What does it mean for me to be a coconspirator in ensuring wellness for all in this place, in this community? I haven’t yet figured out how to dismantle capitalism or white supremacy, but I took on a consulting job for a nonprofit that allowed me to do nothing but be honest about the challenges our human and earth communities were facing.


The Deepest Map by Laura Trethewey

9 dash line, airport security, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, circular economy, clean tech, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, digital map, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, gentrification, global pandemic, high net worth, hive mind, Jeff Bezos, job automation, low earth orbit, Marc Benioff, microplastics / micro fibres, Neil Armstrong, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, space junk, sparse data, TED Talk, UNCLOS, UNCLOS

Watching Nautilus explore online was helpful, but it was not quite close enough. At times, I wanted to sit down beside the ocean mapper and experience it all myself. I kept emailing and calling other organizations and researchers, kept watching E/V Nautilus prowl along the West Coast, and waited for the global pandemic to subside. A year later, just as I was starting to despair that I might never get an inside look at mapping the seafloor, the expedition leader aboard Nautilus called me back. She had an empty berth on a mapping expedition that would be leaving in just over a month. Did I want it? Yes, I said.

Arviat is a young town with an average age of twenty-five and nearly 40 percent of the population under the age of fourteen.15 Here, the youths serve as the mapmakers and the inspiration for charting the coastlines. New technology, including cell phones and GPS, has brought conveniences to the north, along with a false sense of security. Of course, distracted teens are not a problem only in Arviat. Human society writ large is suffering from a global pandemic of distraction. But on the Arctic tundra around Arviat, something as simple as forgetting to charge a satellite phone could be fatal. Step outside your front door, and the wilderness begins. A polar bear might be foraging in your garbage bins. An ATV might blast past on the dark road. (Just a few days after I left, a drunk driver struck and killed a teenager in Rankin Inlet, the next town over.)16 Venture far outside the hamlet’s grid of streets, and you could get lost on the flat tundra without any obvious land markers.

The delegate would begin with some pro forma niceties, such as congratulating the secretary-general on his reappointment or thanking Jamaica for hosting the meeting. Then would come the shit: a pointed observation, criticism, or suggestion that showed a country’s hand. Then the delegate would finish with a congratulation or compliment. After the last three years of living through the chaos of a global pandemic when public health rules had been openly flouted, I enjoyed a bit of rule following these days. But the council felt almost comically divorced from the rough reality of working offshore. There are few people to observe and report crimes at sea, and so more crimes are committed with impunity.


pages: 1,293 words: 357,735

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett

Albert Einstein, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bill Atkinson, biofilm, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, clean water, contact tracing, correlation does not imply causation, discovery of penicillin, disinformation, double helix, Edward Jenner, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, germ theory of disease, global macro, global pandemic, global village, Gregor Mendel, Herbert Marcuse, indoor plumbing, invention of air conditioning, it's over 9,000, John Snow's cholera map, land reform, Live Aid, Louis Pasteur, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, megacity, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, phenotype, price mechanism, Ralph Nader, Recombinant DNA, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, San Francisco homelessness, seminal paper, South China Sea, the scientific method, trade route, transfer pricing, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Zimmermann PGP

While the chances of the planet’s entire human population becoming immune to a rare virus such as Ebola were nil, it was possible that an easily transmitted, ubiquitous respiratory virus like influenza would infect billions of human beings in less than five years’ time, kill off all the susceptibles, and leave the world’s survivors completely immune. Global pandemics were, in fact, a hallmark of influenza that spanned recorded human history. Charlemagne’s conquest of Europe was slowed by an A.D. 876 flu epidemic that spread across the continent and claimed much of his army. Many suspected influenza epidemics followed, though history can only vaguely discriminate between ancient accounts of influenza and other respiratory diseases.

The greater the number of neuraminidase molecules, Kilbourne argued, the more rapidly viruses could complete their budding process and spread. In essence, Kilbourne had found a possible key to both high transmissibility and virulence, explaining why some epidemics produced viruses that rapidly flooded the bloodstreams of infected people and readily became global pandemics, while others caused fairly localized mild outbreaks.13 He proved his point by quantifying the density of neuraminidase proteins on the surface of the influenza strain responsible for the 1957 flu pandemic, a fairly severe wave that swept the world and claimed an estimated 60,000 American lives.

The physicians had to treat it without knowing its nature, and it was among them that the greatest mortality occurred.” It was later thought that the epidemic, which Thucydides said caused illness in every Athenian and killed up to half the population, was either typhus, the plague, or smallpox.7 Hundreds of great global pandemics followed. Four diseases that seemed to William McNeill and other medical historians of the 1970s to have gained particular benefit from the urban ecology over the previous 2,000 years were pneumonic plague, leprosy (Hansen’s disease), tuberculosis, and syphilis. As far as could be discerned from historical records, these were rarely—if ever—seen prior to the establishment of urban societies, and all four exploited to their advantage human conditions unique to cities.


pages: 223 words: 60,936

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere by Tsedal Neeley

Airbnb, Boycotts of Israel, call centre, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discrete time, Donald Trump, future of work, global pandemic, iterative process, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, lockdown, mass immigration, natural language processing, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Silicon Valley, social distancing

Between 2000 and 2015, U.S. multinational companies alone hired 4.3 million employees domestically versus 6.2 million employees overseas—that means millions of people who need digital technology if they are to communicate with the United States, not to mention the millions of domestic workers who work virtually from home over a distance of a few miles. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the global labor workforce will reach 3.5 billion people by 2030. Remote work is increasingly here to stay. The future is in remote work. None of these trends or predictions, however, accounted for a global pandemic that would require the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to remote work in a matter of weeks. The remote work revolution, long in coming, was accelerated by the sudden and severe coronavirus outbreak. Chances are you are part of the massive transition that has forced companies to rapidly advance their digital footprint including cloud, storage, cybersecurity, and device and tool usages to accommodate their new virtual workforce.

They also tried to anticipate how political leaders might respond, both in Mexico and around the world. However, this first situation framing could only do so much. Molinas admitted that she prefers not to spend all her time trying to pin down what the future will hold, an activity she calls “fortune-telling.” Instead, she found it more productive to simply accept that the global pandemic had “disrupted everything,” and that no one—CEO or entry-level assistant—can be certain of an assessment. In place of certainty, she pursued clarity about what choices could be made and their impact on daily work. To adapt to the new situation, she held virtual town-hall meetings where management addressed employee questions, organizational psychologists spoke about mental health challenges, and senior leaders offered insights.


pages: 414 words: 117,581

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix by Dade Hayes, Dawn Chmielewski

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, borderless world, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, digital rights, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, George Floyd, global pandemic, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, hockey-stick growth, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, late fees, lockdown, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, Netflix Prize, Osborne effect, performance metric, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, QR code, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, remote working, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, subscription business, tech bro, the long tail, the medium is the message, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, vertical integration, WeWork

One creator and showrunner behind a top Netflix title said Disney’s entry, in particular, triggered a restlessness in the atmosphere and sparked a frenzy to spend lavishly to secure top talent. While the atmosphere changed, though, there was plenty of reason for Hastings to feel confident. As the global pandemic darkened movie theaters, silenced concerts and festivals, and hobbled professional sports, Netflix had only gained momentum, emerging as the entertainment choice of preference for a home-bound, bored world seeking an escape. Its shows had entered the zeitgeist, whether with a lurid obsession like Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness; a goofy reality show based on the game the Floor Is Lava; or an adrenaline-filled action flick such as Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction.

It targeted a group of influencers known to be swayed by elaborate promotional campaigns, or dinner and a movie (screening)—the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the ninety-member group that awards the Golden Globes. Whatever Apple did worked. The Morning Show received a trio of nominations in 2020—one for best television drama and two for best actress, Aniston and Witherspoon. More than any wining and dining or awards campaigning, the global pandemic changed Apple’s fortunes. As the lights went dark in the nation’s theaters, anxious film studios began seeking out other forms of distribution that could bring in revenue during the box-office drought. Film studios became distressed sellers, angling for a buck. The cash-flush Apple was happy to oblige, though it would do so opportunistically, and with care not to overpay.

The summer debut had been timed to coincide with NBC’s exclusive U.S. broadcast of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, though the cornerstone launch programming crumbled beneath it in March, when the International Olympic Committee postponed the games until July 2021 because of the pandemic. “When we targeted April 15th as the launch date we knew we had our work cut out for us,” Strauss and NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell wrote in a joint email to staff. “But we never imagined we would be faced with the challenges that this global pandemic has created.” The nationwide stay-at-home orders, however, created what NBCU recognized as a once-in-a-century opportunity for media companies, as Nielsen reported a 60 percent spike in streaming across the country. Strauss and Shell hoped to meet this demand by throwing open its film and television vaults.


pages: 361 words: 110,233

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Chelsea Manning, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, East Village, Edward Jenner, ending welfare as we know it, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, informal economy, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, means of production, medical bankruptcy, moral panic, Naomi Klein, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, peak TV, pill mill, QR code, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, social distancing, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

From refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesbos to a makeshift shantytown in West Virginia—even in the best of times, living tightly in tent cities without adequate sanitation makes people more vulnerable to all sorts of viruses, bacteria, and harm. That is to say nothing of the kind of risk that staying in cramped temporary housing poses during a global pandemic. In the United States, people without housing are more likely to become positive with hepatitis A or HIV. It also makes them more likely to be arrested and less likely to adhere to HIV medication protocols—meaning their viral load will not become or stay undetectable. According to a 2019 paper published in Social Science and Medicine, people who are unhoused also “had disproportionately higher adjusted risk of opioid-related” overdose deaths “compared to low-income housed individuals treated at the same hospital.”

This is part of why lethal health disparities plague queer and trans people at such high rates, and why viruses circulate more often in our bodies. When I heard about Lorena Borjas coughing but not wanting to go to the hospital because she feared what would happen to her there, I thought about that receptionist. My heart hurt for Lorena. * * * By the time Lorena got in the ambulance, the true center of the global pandemic was not just in the United States or in New York City, but in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. You could even argue that the epicenter of the epicenter had moved inside Elmhurst Hospital, where the ambulance took Lorena. Her neighbors, the so-called “essential” workers—day laborers, nursing home orderlies, fast-food workers, and sex workers—had not been able to protect themselves by working from home.

And because California’s prisons were among the most powerful COVID-19 hot spots in the nation, so many firefighters were sick or under quarantine that there weren’t enough available to fight the hundreds of fires. It was a moment in which America’s twin epidemics of incarceration and COVID-19 entered into a three-way race with the global pandemic of the climate crisis. This was a disaster of the Democrats’ making. Governor Gavin Newsom, a darling of Gay Inc. since he’d supported same-sex marriages as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, slowly began releasing some incarcerated firefighters in the summer of 2020. But he could have done so months or years earlier.


Working Hard, Hardly Working by Grace Beverley

Cal Newport, clockwatching, COVID-19, David Heinemeier Hansson, death from overwork, glass ceiling, global pandemic, hustle culture, Jeff Bezos, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, stop buying avocado toast, TED Talk, TikTok, unpaid internship, work culture

The social or cultural contract which defines what ‘success’ looks like in today’s society – the one that told us that if we found a good job and worked hard, we would be able to buy a house, pay off the mortgage, and retire with some savings – is breaking down. Instead, post-2008 crash, mid-global pandemic and pre(?!)-environmental crisis, our future seems more uncertain than ever. We’re staring at mass unemployment in the face, many of us are working from home for the first time, and there’s a confusing paradox of both loving this newfound homely freedom and missing the workplace camaraderie (often both at the same time).

There’s nothing wrong with having a side-hustle – it would be hypocritical of me to say otherwise – but there are significant questions to be asked about the impact of it as a culture. It’s become an illustrious dream that turns any second you’re not earning money into an anxiety, and the mental effects of that are draining. As I write this in the midst of a global pandemic, we’re feeling the fear more than ever. Our isolation within our home-office hybrids has led to viral shame, directly linking our self-worth to our ability, not only to adapt, but also to become some sort of productivity machine so that somehow, when all this passes, we are not only alive and virus-free, but also ten years ahead of our peers, trilingual, oh, and a national hero.


pages: 225 words: 70,590

Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Chris Bruntlett, Melissa Bruntlett

15-minute city, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, bike sharing, BIPOC, car-free, coronavirus, COVID-19, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, global pandemic, green new deal, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, Lyft, microplastics / micro fibres, New Urbanism, post-work, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, social distancing, streetcar suburb, the built environment, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, white flight, working-age population, World Values Survey

In response, Coralie started the “Cats of Delft” Instagram account to share pictures of the many felines we encountered walking through the city, which Etienne then took over, using his COVID-19 walks to hunt for kitties to photograph. Living in a place with low traffic meant that as parents, we never once worried for our children’s safety. Their mental health breaks didn’t negatively affect our own mental health, and that fact is incredibly valuable, not just in times of a global pandemic but on a day-to-day basis as well. Parents inherently worry about their children; it’s normal behavior. Choosing a city that has afforded them incredible freedom and autonomy by creating safe places to travel has taken away one level of stress for them and for us. Coralie and Etienne can enjoy time to themselves, and we in turn can relax in the comfort of knowing they’re relatively safe and happy.

(Modacity) By prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists over a fragile car-based system, Delft has positioned itself to deal with the challenges of a twenty-first century city below sea level: including fuel shortages, rising temperatures, and extreme weather. And as it turns out, it was also well placed to deal with a global pandemic. In the months that followed those first days of lockdown, the biggest change to our daily existence was that we were no longer traveling to work or school each day, and had reduced our trips to the grocery store. Without knowing or planning it, we landed in a place where the built environment helped mitigate the physical and emotional impacts of a worldwide catastrophe, a place resilient enough against external stresses that it helped residents take care of themselves and each other under the most difficult of circumstances.


pages: 268 words: 64,786

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away by Julien Saunders, Kiersten Saunders

barriers to entry, basic income, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, death from overwork, digital divide, diversification, do what you love, Donald Trump, estate planning, financial independence, follow your passion, future of work, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, index fund, job automation, job-hopping, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lifestyle creep, Lyft, microaggression, multilevel marketing, non-fungible token, off-the-grid, passive income, passive investing, performance metric, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, side hustle, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, work culture , young professional

Having a freezer would allow her to store more food and ultimately serve more families. So that’s what we did. We bought one small five-cubic-foot freezer for our garage and funded the purchasing of a fourteen-and-a-half-cubic-foot freezer for her organization. The timing couldn’t have been better, because at the time we were in the middle of a global pandemic and several families were in desperate need of delicious and nutritious meals. Our intention was to help one family, but our community directed us on how we could help hundreds more. If it weren’t for them, we likely would never have heard of Erica or the amazing work she’s doing right in our own backyard.

And for those who prefer visual definitions, memes and GIFs of people guzzling oversize cocktails while crying uncontrollably or simply staring into the abyss of their screens with bloodshot eyes summed up the year spent mostly inside. Our feelings were no different, having spent the majority of the year in a daily battle against the intense sadness forced upon us by a global pandemic. Simple everyday acts like going to the grocery store, taking a walk, or opening mail became matters of life or death. As parents of a toddler, we struggled with the decision of whether to send our son to day care and assume the increased risk of COVID-19 exposure. Having been in day care for only a short while and having just begun to build his first relationships outside home, our son, like most kids, hated having to learn and socialize through a screen.


pages: 245 words: 75,397

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

California just declared a state of emergency. The tape bombs are flying. Uncertainty is high. Markets hate uncertainty. Crude is getting drilled again. The entire energy space is burned out—and airlines, travel, casinos, hotels—everything is getting pounded. The World Health Organization has just declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. At a press briefing, Trump issues an order to control the spread of the virus in the USA: “My administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible. Avoid gathering in groups of more than ten people. Avoid discretionary travel.

It’s too late to hedge. Liquidity is gone. You do your damnedest to fucking just stay alive, maintain fewer positions, figure out where the pain is. Trade small so you can widen stops. Don’t get cute. Don’t try to be a hero. It’s insane how events such as this seem to get multiplied. It’s not just one. It’s global pandemic and oil shock, both unexpected. Today, this combination is exposing our economy’s Achilles’ heel: too much fucking debt. That’s our soft underbelly, our weakest link. We’ve been running this scam for fifty fucking years. We built a world based on a debt bubble of epic proportions. It has tried to pop lots of times, but every time, we just shuffle the deck.


pages: 236 words: 73,008

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan by Murong Xuecun

Boris Johnson, citizen journalism, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, global pandemic, lockdown, megacity, Ponzi scheme, QR code, social distancing, TikTok

While this Kafkaesque story reveals how the Chinese government works, Communist Party propaganda will boast about ‘the superiority of our system’ and how this superior system helps China to defeat the virus. But that patient almost died from their superior system. This superior system allowed a controllable epidemic to become a calamitous once-in-one-hundred-years global pandemic. Lin’s isolation station is a dull grey building – a hastily repurposed hotel. All the windows are sealed and several security officers guard the tightly locked main entrance. In a car outside the station, a senior leader sits nonchalantly, and in the command centre further on, the big boss looks like he’s on holiday.

But in China countless people, including Xi Jinping, believe in this ‘wisdom of our ancestors’. Mr Xi frequently praises TCM, at home and abroad. In the eight years of his reign, this medical mysticism has been promoted as never before. In May 2020, Beijing publishes a draft law for public comment that virtually criminalises ‘vilification or slandering TCM’. During the global pandemic, the Chinese government continues to promote TCM. According to its White Paper published on 7 June, ‘In Hubei province, more than 90 per cent of confirmed cases received TCM treatment that proved effective.’ Such statistics put Lin Qingchuan in a quandary. ‘You can’t say these numbers are incorrect.


pages: 426 words: 136,925

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, call centre, carried interest, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, death of newspapers, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, edge city, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jessica Bruder, jitney, Kiva Systems, lockdown, Lyft, mass incarceration, McMansion, megaproject, microapartment, military-industrial complex, new economy, Nomadland, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, Ralph Nader, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, tech worker, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, white flight, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Works Progress Administration

“They may be doing quite a bit,” she said, but the company “is also profiting every step along the way on the backs of their employees, who are not being protected, and neither are their families being protected.” She couldn’t help but feel some regret for having goaded Hector there in the first place. “They call themselves a technology company, but it’s really a sweatshop,” she said. “They have such a hold on our economy and our country.” * * * Like all great crises, the global pandemic of 2020 revealed the weaknesses of nations it attacked. In the case of the United States, that weakness was the extraordinary inequality across different places and communities. When it reached the country, the coronavirus first struck its upper echelons, the highly prosperous precincts that had tighter connections with their global peers than with scruffier places in their own backyard: Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Manhattan.

By late 2019, it had more than 750,000 employees worldwide and 400,000 employees in the United States, the overwhelming majority of them in the company’s more than two hundred fulfillment centers, sortation centers, and other delivery facilities. In 2017 alone, the company grew by 130,000 worldwide; in the summer of 2019, it hired 97,000, nearly the entire workforce of Google. And this was before the hiring spree that would arrive with the global pandemic of the spring of 2020. Warehousing and distribution used to be considered somewhat higher-skilled jobs: one could make over $20 per hour and stay years at a time. At Amazon, it was a more fleeting existence. Workers tended to be younger. Turnover was exceedingly high. And the seasonal workforce was often literally transient, in the form of the CamperForce of retirees traveling the country in RVs that Amazon deployed for its holiday rush.

And the trend was self-reinforcing—the fewer opportunities one had to meet one’s needs in a physical space, buying goods face-to-face from another person in one’s own town or city, the more likely one was to turn to the other option: shopping, often alone, from the comfort of home. Even before a global pandemic forced Americans to shop from home, they had increasing reason to do so: online shopping was appealing because it was more convenient than the competition. And it became even more relatively convenient as the competition vanished, leaving one with no other options in close proximity. * * * Jared’s death left Taylor stunned and engulfed in self-reproach.


pages: 82 words: 24,150

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism by Grace Blakeley

Anthropocene, asset-backed security, basic income, Big Tech, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, debt deflation, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, don't be evil, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, global value chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, income inequality, informal economy, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, price mechanism, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, reshoring, Rishi Sunak, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, social distancing, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, yield curve

Aside from helping to cause the 2008 financial crisis, capital mobility has sucked money out of the Global South and into financial vortexes such as Wall Street and the City of London. Now it is threatening the solvency of governments responsible for providing healthcare for billions of people in the midst of a global pandemic. The first and most pressing priority must be a debt write-off for the Global South. Longer-term, the kind of state intervention required to tackle climate change – democratic public ownership over most of the economy, dramatic increases in state spending and the controls on capital mobility required to achieve this – are not merely frowned upon by the World Bank and the IMF, they are actively prohibited.


pages: 513 words: 152,381

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, availability heuristic, biodiversity loss, Columbian Exchange, computer vision, cosmological constant, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, defense in depth, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ernest Rutherford, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, OpenAI, p-value, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, power law, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, social discount rate, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, survivorship bias, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, William MacAskill

We can’t rule out the loss of more than 90 percent of the population of the Americas during that century, though the number could also be much lower.12 And it is very difficult to tease out how much of this should be attributed to war and occupation, rather than disease. As a rough upper bound, the Columbian exchange may have killed as many as 10 percent of the world’s people.13 Centuries later, the world had become so interconnected that a truly global pandemic was possible. Near the end of the First World War, a devastating strain of influenza (known as the 1918 flu or Spanish Flu) spread to six continents, and even remote Pacific islands. At least a third of the world’s population were infected and 3 to 6 percent were killed.14 This death toll outstripped that of the First World War, and possibly both World Wars combined.

Yet the virus escaped from a badly maintained pipe, leaking into the groundwater at the facility. After an investigation, the lab’s license was renewed—only for another leak to occur two weeks later.30 In my view, this track record of escapes shows that even BSL-4 is insufficient for working on pathogens that pose a risk of global pandemics on the scale of the 1918 flu or worse—especially if that research involves gain-of-function (and the extremely dangerous H5N1 gain-of-function research wasn’t even performed at BSL-4).31 Thirteen years since the last publicly acknowledged outbreak from a BSL-4 facility is not good enough. It doesn’t matter whether this is from insufficient standards, inspections, operations or penalties.

They attracted several thousand members, including people with advanced skills in chemistry and biology. And they demonstrated that it was not mere misanthropic ideation. They launched multiple lethal attacks using VX gas and sarin gas, killing 22 people and injuring thousands.50 They attempted to weaponize anthrax, but did not succeed. What happens when the circle of people able to create a global pandemic becomes wide enough to include members of such a group? Or members of a terrorist organization or rogue state that could try to build an omnicidal weapon for the purposes of extortion or deterrence? The main candidate for biological risk over the coming decades thus stems from our technology—particularly the risk of misuse by states or small groups.


pages: 772 words: 150,109

As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age by Matthew Cobb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Apollo 11, Asilomar, bioinformatics, Black Lives Matter, Build a better mousetrap, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fellow of the Royal Society, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Higgs boson, lab leak, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, out of africa, planetary scale, precautionary principle, profit motive, Project Plowshare, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Skype, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Wayback Machine, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

Ebright even claimed that because of the sudden, massive expansion in US research in the area, ‘the NIH was funding a research and development arm of al-Qaeda’.60 The underlying political context of this research changed over time as the face of the enemy perpetually shifted – from Iraq and its non-existent links to al-Qaeda in 2001–2003, through the fear of Islamist terrorist groups flourishing in the ashes of Iraq, Afghanistan and then Syria, to ever-present and legitimate concerns about the near-inevitability of a natural global pandemic. The only thing that was constant was the research itself and the growing likelihood that something might go terribly wrong, either deliberately or by accident. A whole generation of researchers matured and flourished in this atmosphere, using their brilliance and mastery of genetic engineering to carry out experiments that would have horrified the delegates at Asilomar, but which were now an accepted part of the scientific landscape.

The sequencing work, which involved extracting viral DNA from body parts kept in formalin and from an Alaskan victim who had been buried in the permafrost in November 1918, was carried out at the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Scientific and public awareness of the possibility of a natural global pandemic was high, given that the world had dodged a bullet in 2002–2003 when a SARS coronavirus epidemic emerged in southern China. The origin of this coronavirus was a spillover event from bats (it took fifteen years to identify the source) – the outbreak resulted in over 8,000 infections with an alarming 10 per cent mortality rate before being stifled by basic public health measures.64 Whereas sequencing the influenza virus was dangerous but could be justified, resurrecting it seemed dangerous but pointless.

The data point to a natural spillover event such as we have seen in the past and will almost certainly see again.112 The long, painstaking research that was required before the bat origin of SARS was identified explains why there was no immediate agreement on which animal species was the original host of SARS-CoV-2 – such things take a long time even in the absence of a global pandemic.113 One possible solution to concerns about identifying manipulated pathogens, and indeed a potential resolution to some of the more outlandish speculation about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, may lie in the use of genetic engineering forensics – complex bioinformatic analyses – to determine whether an organism involved in a disease outbreak has been genetically modified and, if so, to infer its likely origin.


pages: 326 words: 88,968

The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now by Sergey Young

23andMe, 3D printing, Albert Einstein, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, brain emulation, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, digital twin, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Easter island, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, European colonialism, game design, Gavin Belson, George Floyd, global pandemic, hockey-stick growth, impulse control, Internet of things, late capitalism, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, moral hazard, mouse model, natural language processing, personalized medicine, plant based meat, precision agriculture, radical life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, TED Talk, uber lyft, ultra-processed food, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Vision Fund, X Prize

Then COVID-19 happened. During the first month of the outbreak in China, the smartphone telemedicine app Ping An Good Doctor increased its virtual visits by more than one billion.12 It was much the same with other tech players in China, like Tencent’s WeDoctor, Ali Health, and JD Health. When the virus became a global pandemic, Western telemedicine providers like Teladoc, iClinic, and Doctor on Demand were also swamped with new patients. Medicare approved telemedicine, and US laws were quickly relaxed to allow doctors to practice across state lines. Each of these remote diagnosis companies provides services like consultations, high-definition video examinations, and pharmaceutical prescriptions through apps, websites, and special videoconference links.

Your mechanical organs will constantly transmit their working status to external monitoring devices and AI algorithms that keep them in perfect repair. Software updates and maintenance notifications will be issued as reliably as you would expect for the most advanced of twenty-first-century automobiles. When a new infectious disease emerges, there will be no global pandemic. Quantum computer–powered AGI will identify the correct response required to eliminate the invader and download instructions to pharmacies-on-chip in your embedded immune system the way that software patches for new computer viruses are automatically installed today. Data from your nanorobots and microchip checkpoints will be compared against the most current medical and epidemiological knowledge.


pages: 367 words: 102,188

Sleepyhead: Narcolepsy, Neuroscience and the Search for a Good Night by Henry Nicholls

A. Roger Ekirch, confounding variable, Donald Trump, double helix, Drosophila, global pandemic, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mouse model, placebo effect, Saturday Night Live, stem cell, traumatic brain injury, web application, Yom Kippur War

By then, geneticists had identified the strain of the virus as H1N1, the very same as the Spanish influenza responsible for the global flu pandemic in 1918, estimated to have killed somewhere between 50 to 100 million people. With cases of swine flu being confirmed across the world, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic in June. In short, in the middle of 2009 there was intense institutional fear that the swine flu could bring about a repeat of the Spanish flu. Pharmaceutical companies were soon bidding for multimillion-dollar contracts to rush out a vaccine before the flu season really got under way in the winter months of the northern hemisphere.

p. 145 every November there’s a trough Fang Han and others, ‘Narcolepsy Onset Is Seasonal and Increased Following the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic in China’, Annals of Neurology 70.3 (2011), 410–17. p. 147 84 deaths ‘Outbreak of Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infection – Mexico, March–April 2009’, Press Release from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 April 2009 <http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm58d0430a2.htm> [accessed 24 October 2017]. p. 147 global pandemic Declan Butler, ‘Flu Pandemic Underway’, Nature News, 11 June 2009 <https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2009.564>. p. 148 that was really the key Markku Partinen, Interview with author, 5 January 2016. p. 150 near-permanent somnolence Josh Hadfield and Caroline Hadfield, Interview with author, 14 August 2015.


pages: 343 words: 101,563

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, anthropic principle, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Blockadia, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Chekhov's gun, climate anxiety, cognitive bias, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, effective altruism, Elon Musk, endowment effect, energy transition, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, failed state, fiat currency, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, it's over 9,000, Joan Didion, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kevin Roose, Kim Stanley Robinson, labor-force participation, life extension, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, megastructure, Michael Shellenberger, microdosing, microplastics / micro fibres, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Solow, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the built environment, The future is already here, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Whole Earth Catalog, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

At four degrees of warming, the fire season would be four times worse still. The California fire captain believes the term is already outdated: “We don’t even call it fire season anymore,” he said in 2017. “Take the ‘season’ out—it’s year-round.” But wildfires are not an American affliction; they are a global pandemic. In icy Greenland, fires in 2017 appeared to burn ten times more area than in 2014; and in Sweden, in 2018, forests in the Arctic Circle went up in flames. Fires that far north may seem innocuous, relatively speaking, since there are not so many people up there. But they are increasing more rapidly than fires in lower latitudes, and they concern climate scientists greatly: the soot and ash they give off can land on and blacken ice sheets, which then absorb more of the sun’s rays and melt more quickly.

For Rushkoff, these are all facets of the same impulse, broadly shared by the class of visionaries and power brokers and venture capitalists whose dreams for the future are received as blueprints, especially by the armies of engineers they command like impetuous fiefdoms—investing in new forms of space travel, life extension, and technology-aided life after death. “They were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion,” he writes. “For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.” “An Account of My Hut”: Christina Nichol, “An Account of My Hut,” n+1, Spring 2018. Nichol explains the title this way: I once read a story called “An Account of My Hut,” by Kamo no Chōmei, a 12th-century Japanese hermit.


pages: 323 words: 95,939

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Andrew Keen, bank run, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, big-box store, Black Swan, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, cashless society, citizen journalism, clockwork universe, cognitive dissonance, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, disintermediation, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, Elliott wave, European colonialism, Extropian, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, Inbox Zero, invention of agriculture, invention of hypertext, invisible hand, iterative process, James Bridle, John Nash: game theory, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Merlin Mann, messenger bag, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, passive investing, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Pan Syndrome, price mechanism, prisoner's dilemma, Ralph Nelson Elliott, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, scientific management, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, social graph, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, technological determinism, the medium is the message, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero-sum game

A collapse in one small European nation also takes down the many overseas banks that have leveraged its debt. There’s nowhere to invest that’s insulated from any other market’s problems. Likewise, thanks to the interconnectedness of our food supply and transportation networks, the outbreak of a disease on the poultry farms of China necessarily threatens to become a global pandemic. A connected world is like a table covered with loaded mousetraps. If one trap snaps, the rest of the table will follow in rapid, catastrophic succession. Like a fight between siblings in the back of the car on a family trip, it doesn’t matter who started it. Everybody is in it, now. Along with most technology hopefuls of the twentieth century, I was one of the many pushing for more connectivity and openness as the millennium approached.

“I don’t mean apocalypse in the religious way,” Dan explains as he escorts me down the single spiral metal staircase leading to the living quarters. (Hard to get out in a fire, I suppose, but easier to defend if attacked.) “I’m thinking Contagion, Asteroid, even China Syndrome,” he explains, using movie-title shorthand for global pandemic, collision with an asteroid, or nuclear meltdown. He is used to being interviewed. “What about The Day After Tomorrow?” I suggest, bringing climate change into the mix. “Not likely,” Dan says. “That’s been debunked.” Dan is a former real estate assessor who now makes his living selling information online to “preppers” like himself, who have assumed that catastrophe is imminent and that the best way through is to prepare for the inevitable collapse of civilization as we know it.


pages: 414 words: 101,285

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do About It by Ian Goldin, Mike Mariathasan

air freight, air traffic controllers' union, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon tax, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, connected car, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, energy security, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, John Snow's cholera map, Kenneth Rogoff, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, moral hazard, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open economy, precautionary principle, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reshoring, risk free rate, Robert Solow, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social contagion, social distancing, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration

Complex system researchers Dirk Brockmann, Lars Hufnagel, and Theo Geisel simulated the effects of a single individual infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) placed anywhere in the world using data that accounted for 95 percent of the entire global civil aviation traffic and assuming virulence equivalent to that of SARS.32 Whereas in previous centuries the insular nature of parochial communities would contain such an infection and give the authorities time to consider their options, now two plane journeys on average would require the vaccination of 75 percent of the world’s population to avoid a global pandemic. After three flights, global vaccination would be required. This simulation illustrates an inevitable consequence of increased integration, but its message is not simply theoretical. SARS reached 30 countries and affected 8,400 people within only nine months of its detection in November 2002.

Scientific studies indicate that migratory wildfowl have the potential to carry H5N1 but suggest that “the likelihood of … virus dispersal over long distances … is low” and “estimate that for an individual migratory bird there are, on average, only 5–15 days per year when infection could result in the dispersal of H5N1 virus over 500 km.”52 The transfer of live birds and animals by airfreight and ships, however, means that these pathogens can now travel faster and farther than before and do not have to rely on the long-distance migration of birds. In short, modern technologies significantly heighten the risk of global pandemics. Figure 6.3. Destination cities and corresponding volumes of international passengers arriving from Mexico, 1 March–30 April 2008. Kamran Khan et al., 2009, “Spread of a Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus via Global Airline Transportation,” New England Journal of Medicine 361 (2): 212–214. © 2009 Massachusetts Medical Society.


Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, autism spectrum disorder, British Empire, colonial rule, dark matter, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, global pandemic, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, invisible hand, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, placebo effect, social distancing, trade route, urban renewal

Among the Igbo of Nigeria, for example, those born between 1919 and 1921 were known as ogbo ifelunza, the influenza age group. ‘Ifelunza’, an obvious corruption of ‘influenza’, became incorporated into the Igbo lexicon for the first time that autumn. Before that, they had had no word for the disease. As time went on, and it transpired that there were not many local epidemics, but one global pandemic–it became necessary to agree on a single name. The one that was adopted was the one that was already being used by the most powerful nations on earth–the victors in the Great War. The pandemic became known as the Spanish flu–ispanka, espanhola, la grippe espagnole, die Spanische Grippe–and a historical wrong became set in stone. 6 The doctors’ dilemma The flu had been named; the foe had a face.

Individual social class, household wealth and mortality from Spanish influenza in two socially contrasting parishes in Kristiania 1918–19’, Social Science & Medicine, February 2006; 62(4):923–40. 2. C. E. A. Winslow and J. F. Rogers, ‘Statistics of the 1918 epidemic of influenza in Connecticut’, Journal of Infectious Diseases, 1920; 26:185–216. 3. C. J. L. Murray et al., ‘Estimation of potential global pandemic influenza mortality on the basis of vital registry data from the 1918–20 pandemic: a quantitative analysis’, Lancet, 2006; 368:2211–18. 4. C. Lim, ‘The pandemic of the Spanish influenza in colonial Korea’, Korea Journal, Winter 2011:59–88. 5. D. Hardiman, ‘The influenza epidemic of 1918 and the Adivasis of Western India’, Social History of Medicine, 2012; 25(3):644–64. 6.


pages: 345 words: 100,989

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, Eyjafjallajökull, financial engineering, fixed income, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Kickstarter, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Masayoshi Son, means of production, Menlo Park, mittelstand, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, private military company, proprietary trading, remote working, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, supply chain finance, Tim Haywood, Vision Fund, WeWork, work culture

Solo’s link to Degen proved critical in getting Credit Suisse’s backing for Greensill. (Systematic Investment Management, known as SIMAG, was supposed to conjure up investment ideas that could survive any market crisis, using physics, complex self-organizing systems, and behavioural science. Instead, it struggled to cope with the turmoil of the global pandemic. In October 2020, Solo left the business and Credit Suisse folded it into another fund.) There were Greensill sceptics at Credit Suisse, for sure. Bankers who worked with insurance companies who had dealt with Lex had heard of his reputation for pushing the boundaries and for lending to borrowers who defaulted all too often.

He texted the top civil servant there, Sir Tom Scholar, saying he was ‘genuinely baffled’ that Greensill wasn’t given access to CCFF, and that he would call Sunak, and ‘everyone’. Minutes later, he went straight to Sunak, though the details of their conversation have never been made public. Pretty soon, Cameron was back at Cunliffe, asking for him to speak with Lex in person. Lex’s belief in his own abilities as a salesman was unshaken, even by a global pandemic. Eventually, in late April, Cunliffe finally relented and agreed to hear him out. Greensill delivered his pitch, but Cunliffe was unmoved. The lobbying effort went on, through April, May and into June. During that period, Cameron blitzed his former government colleagues with messages. In one early April dialogue, Sunak had told Cameron he was ‘stuck back to back on calls’ and promised to talk later.


pages: 349 words: 99,230

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice by Jamie K. McCallum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, occupational segregation, post-work, QR code, race to the bottom, remote working, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, side hustle, single-payer health, social distancing, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, The Great Resignation, the strength of weak ties, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Most workers I met and interviewed derived a sense of pride from being a frontline worker. They saw how public sentiment favored them, probably for the first time, and got a renewed sense of satisfaction and purpose from their roles. Many remarked on the ways they were treated with greater levels of respect on the job yet regretted that it took a global pandemic for customers and policymakers and the general public to see service workers as deserving of appreciation. Early in the pandemic, this positive change in the public’s perception of them led many essential workers to feel a stronger sense of solidarity and community with each other. In March 2020, Bailey Delaplaine was relieved to learn that her job as a welder would be declared a nonessential service.

29 What if our workfare programs push millions of poor people into the labor market just so they can collect benefits, even when they have competing obligations to children or elders in their home? What if we pay home care workers such shoddy wages that they leave their industry for fast-food jobs that pay slightly more, creating a massive care worker deficit just when we need them more than ever? What if—stick with me here—a deadly global pandemic throws the economy into free fall and costs us our healthcare and our job, and we’re sick with a virus that no one knows how to cure? The pandemic put us face-to-face with these impossible questions. It profoundly disrupted our ability to work for a wage while performing the usual amount of home-based labor.


pages: 352 words: 104,411

Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work by Iain Gately

Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, autonomous vehicles, Beeching cuts, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business intelligence, business process, business process outsourcing, California high-speed rail, call centre, car-free, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Clapham omnibus, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, connected car, corporate raider, DARPA: Urban Challenge, Dean Kamen, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, don't be evil, driverless car, Elon Musk, extreme commuting, Ford Model T, General Motors Futurama, global pandemic, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, low skilled workers, Marchetti’s constant, planned obsolescence, postnationalism / post nation state, Ralph Waldo Emerson, remote working, safety bicycle, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, SpaceShipOne, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, Suez crisis 1956, telepresence, Tesla Model S, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, urban planning, éminence grise

Unless and until we evolve into creatures that have no such needs, and have erased the desires to hunt and gather from our nature, there will be a Clapham omnibus, or its latter-day equivalent, ferrying people between their places of labour and rest. Unless, of course, we won’t have to work in the future, or companionship goes out of fashion after, say, a deadly global pandemic. Would we then commute for nostalgia, or even pleasure? Has commuting worked its way so deep into our culture that we’d find it hard to give up absolutely? Or would we frown on it, as we do slavery and burning witches, as belonging to an ignorant, violent and primitive past? People have been predicting both the imminent demise and the perpetual rise of commuting almost since it started.

But there’s no need to fear 9 billion, or indeed 9,000 billion. In a 1964 essay, ‘How Many People Can the World Support?’, John Heaver Fremlin, an English physicist, argued that limitations on human population growth were determined by physics rather than biology. Barring catastrophes such as a meteorite strike, an apocalyptic war or a deadly global pandemic; and assuming that the entire surface of the planet, ‘land and sea alike’, was covered with 2,000-storey buildings; that people ate their dead and their sewage; that both the north and south poles had been melted on purpose; and there was absolute and eternal world peace; then mother earth could carry up to 60,000,000,000,000,000 (sixty thousand trillion) people by around the year 2964.


pages: 489 words: 106,008

Risk: A User's Guide by Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fear of failure, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Googley, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, inflight wifi, invisible hand, iterative process, late fees, lockdown, Paul Buchheit, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, source of truth, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, work culture

Finally, we saw how a counterintuitive strategy to stop more often during a Formula 1 race proved to be the right use of our most precious commodity: time. While timing is, in all cases, important, the political courage to act coupled with effective levers of management is essential. In the case of COVID-19 and Hurricane Katrina, HHS and FEMA conducted two separate exercises that predicted the risks of an imminent global pandemic on the one hand (Crimson Contagion) and a hurricane that would hit and devastate New Orleans on the other (Hurricane Pam). Both exercises were conducted before the respective crises occurred—and eerily predicted the circumstances that would later arise when COVID-19 droplets dispersed across the globe, and when Hurricane Katrina’s winds whipped on New Orleans’s famous Bourbon Street.

And rather than gathering the leaders and stakeholders in city hall to hash out the details, almost everything had to be done virtually—in many cases, by people who required the help of their teenage kids to coax home videoconferencing systems into working. Simply put, Mayor Walsh and his team had to govern faster and more collaboratively than ever before—and do it under the challenges of COVID-19. “Let’s Kick Some Ass Today” Kathryn Burton hadn’t expected to start her job in the middle of a global pandemic. Burton, born in Canada but experienced in Massachusetts government, began her role as Mayor Walsh’s chief of staff on March 9, 2020. She’d jumped into the whirlwind of a new position in a city government about to undergo some dramatic changes. Just over two weeks later, she was tasked to lead Boston’s daily Crisis Response Forum meeting.


pages: 437 words: 113,173

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Dava Sobel, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Doha Development Round, double helix, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental economics, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, full employment, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial robot, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Johannes Kepler, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahbub ul Haq, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Max Levchin, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, open economy, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, post-Panamax, profit motive, public intellectual, quantum cryptography, rent-seeking, reshoring, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, Snapchat, special economic zone, spice trade, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, uber lyft, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, zero day

The day we all hear of reliable human-to-human airborne transmission of H5N1, the world will come to a sharp stop. Would you get on a plane, knowing that a highly infectious virus with a 60 percent kill rate might be on board with you? In reality, you won’t face this choice: protocols already in place will shut borders and halt air traffic globally. Pandemic models show that a human H5N1 virus could easily surpass the Black Death of 1348–1350 as humanity’s deadliest known extinction event. Depending on how early the pandemic is detected and how quickly a vaccine can be deployed, epidemiologists estimate that an H5N1 outbreak could infect up to one billion people and directly cause up to 150 million deaths.*** Panic, riots, looting—in general, a fear-fueled breakdown of social order—could push the death toll even higher.

Recent simulations have shown that a contagious airborne pathogen (like H5N1) carried into any major airport, on any continent, would be global within three days at most.41 If the infected individual took just two plane journeys prior to a public health quarantine, more than 5 billion people (75 percent of humanity) would need to be vaccinated to prevent a global pandemic. After three flights, global vaccination would be required.42 The concentration dilemmas are getting thornier. It is not a question of if, but when, a pandemic will strike a major political, financial or industrial center and force its complete (albeit temporary) isolation from all physical flows in the global system—with hard-to-predict consequences for infrastructure services like energy and IT.


pages: 482 words: 117,962

Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future by Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron, Meera Balarajan

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, conceptual framework, creative destruction, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, endogenous growth, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, labour mobility, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, life extension, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, machine readable, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, open borders, out of africa, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, Richard Florida, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, spice trade, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce, working-age population

Similarly, the British government sent convicts to Australia rather than Gemane Island on the Gambia River, because of the high risk of disease in the Gambia.26 The inhospitality of West Africa provided opportunities for the relatives of African slaves to later move to Sierra Leone and Liberia.27 Ending the biological isolation of parts of the world would eventually make it possible for people to travel easily between countries and climates—and it would also enable the rapid spread of global pandemics—but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the devastation wrought by disease had wide-ranging consequences. The traumatic depopulation of the Americas opened the way for the gradual European settlement and domination of the continent. In Africa, the lower indigenous susceptibility to European diseases (because of historical contact) and the inhibiting presence of yellow fever and malaria meant that African populations and culture retained their integrity in the absence of overwhelming European domination.28 However, it also meant that African slaves were preferred to European convict and indentured labor in the Caribbean, because of their resistance to tropical diseases.29 Until the 1830s, forced African migrants outnumbered both free and indentured Europeans in the Americas.30 Between 500 BCE and 1200 CE, Eurasia experienced a process of what epidemiologists term “viral reservoir integration” as contact between civilizations intensified; most of the “historically significant biological exchange” in Afro-Eurasia had occurred by 1400 CE.31 The “pathocenosis” (or the codevelopment of disease and populations, including their immunity) in Eurasia was quite separate from that which occurred in the Americas centuries later.

In the early nineteenth century, Britain banned the emigration of skilled workers as it was industrializing, but many left anyway—recruited by employers in France, Germany, Russia, and America.2 More recently, some academics have argued for severe limitations on immigration to avoid unsustainable population growth (although most have stopped short of advocating zero immigration).3In the UK, David Cameron, the Conservative Party prime minister, has indicated his support for limiting the population to below 70 million to contain the “very great pressures on public services.”4 There is also a growing chorus calling for limits on immigration for environmental reasons.5 Stephen Nickell highlights the need for more research into how the environmental and other costs associated with more migration may be offset by the longer term benefits and suggests that a case may be made for limiting migration on environmental grounds particularly where space is limited.6 A country may close its borders temporarily to prevent the spread of disease, as some analysts have speculated would occur in the case of a global pandemic.7 In our globalized world, it would be unusual for border closure to be more than a short-term response to particular threats or political pressures. Globalization has knit countries together in a dynamic network of cross-border exchange, of which migration is a constituent element. Most countries rely on global networks for a significant share of their GDP.


pages: 424 words: 114,820

Neurodiversity at Work: Drive Innovation, Performance and Productivity With a Neurodiverse Workforce by Amanda Kirby, Theo Smith

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, Automated Insights, barriers to entry, Black Lives Matter, call centre, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, deep learning, digital divide, double empathy problem, epigenetics, fear of failure, future of work, gamification, global pandemic, iterative process, job automation, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Minecraft, neurotypical, phenotype, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, seminal paper, the built environment, traumatic brain injury, work culture

There is no such thing as a “degree in Neurodiversity” for HR and D&I professionals, but for anyone looking to expand their knowledge in this field, this book is as close as you are going to get to it!’ Aidan Healy, Chief Executive Officer, Lexxic Neurodiversity at Work Drive innovation, performance and productivity with a neurodiverse workforce Theo Smith Amanda Kirby We have written this book through a global pandemic, for our families, children, and all those who each and every day get up and swim against the tide. This book is for you. May you no longer have to swim so hard so often, with so little support and recognition for how truly brilliant you are. Together, we shall overcome... Contents About the authors Preface Introduction 01 Why neurodiversity is important Introduction Why do we exclude some people from the conversation?

Partly inspired by Shelley’s journey after seeing her present at a SmartRecruiters Hiring Success conference, and with an interest in employability in prisons, he went on his own journey to help others in need. During the entire lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, from his home in Northampton, he, his wife and family cooked well over 6,000 meals for rough sleepers. Not the plan, but a response to a global pandemic in his local area. What started out as a small volunteer programme supporting a homeless charity, Project 16:15, turned into their own mission, TRUFeeds, where Bill and Fran Boorman tirelessly worked to raise funds from the recruitment community and beyond to feed those in need. This journey has gone from feeding and supporting 100 rough sleepers on the streets, to helping them connect to the key support services that can give them access to work and housing.


pages: 391 words: 112,312

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

not to be SARS: www.who.int/​docs/​default-source/​coronaviruse/​transcripts/​who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-20apr2020.pdf. strikingly low rate: Yu-Jie Chen and Jerome A. Cohen, “Why Does the WHO Exclude Taiwan? Council on Foreign Relations, April 9, 2020. Chinese technology companies: “The Origins of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic Including the roles of the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Staff Interim Report, June 12, 2020. “damage stability”: Kristin Huang, “Coronavirus: Wuhan doctor says officials muzzled her for sharing report on WeChat,” South China Morning Post, March 11, 2020.

Translated by Mollie Saltskog. “If I had known:” Lily Kuo, “Coronavirus: Wuhan doctor speaks out against the authorities,” Guardian, Mar. 11, 2020. “severely disturbed”: Congressional Research Service, “COVID-19 and China,” May 13, 2020. His punishment: “The Origins of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, Including the Roles of the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Staff Report, Sept. 21, 2020. “How can the bulletins”: Congressional Research Service: COVID-19 and China, May 13, 2020. forced reporters into detention: Vivian Wang, “They Documented the Coronavirus Crises in Wuhan.


Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking by Michael Bhaskar

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, call centre, carbon tax, charter city, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cognitive load, Columbian Exchange, coronavirus, cosmic microwave background, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cyber-physical system, dark matter, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Eroom's law, fail fast, false flag, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, Haber-Bosch Process, hedonic treadmill, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, hive mind, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberation theology, lockdown, lone genius, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Gell-Mann, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, nudge unit, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-truth, precautionary principle, public intellectual, publish or perish, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, Slavoj Žižek, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, techlash, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, total factor productivity, transcontinental railway, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, When a measure becomes a target, X Prize, Y Combinator

We don't need to go full Spengler to wonder whether there is something of Vienna about the entire Western world, a Viennaification of our ideational environment; not so much the fall of Rome as a mix of self-satisfied embourgeoisement, timidity, complacency and pointless rancour – even in the face of, say, a global pandemic. Like Bell Labs, blessed with a glorious legacy, a great foundation and much forward momentum; like Bell Labs, like Vienna, slouching past its most revolutionary phase into something altogether more ‘decadent’, more comfortable, more indulgent. It's still probably better to do almost anything today than in the great age of Bell Labs or the Viennese heyday, let alone the seventeenth century.

Across the Atlantic, the message, and the impact, was the same: ‘The experts are terrible,’ said then presidential candidate Donald Trump. Just as we had reached new peaks of complexity and difficulty and required expertise more than ever, the very notion had become toxic, the emblem of a self-interested and pompous elite; the problem, not the solution.74 This was hardly the best preparation for a global pandemic. A barrage of populisms means that ideas are adversely re-politicised. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the exploration of new ideas had never felt less controversial. This now looks like a chimerical interlude. While populism is typically taken to be the wave of broadly nationalist sentiments that has surged since the 2010s, I take it here in the widest sense, as shorthand for a spectrum of intersecting social pressures.


pages: 442 words: 112,155

The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure by Yascha Mounk

23andMe, affirmative action, basic income, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, Donald Trump, failed state, global pandemic, illegal immigration, income inequality, language acquisition, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, unpaid internship, World Values Survey

And while black boys experience less social mobility than white boys, black girls have a higher chance of moving up the socioeconomic ranks to lower middle class or middle class than white girls. Data on absolute income paints a similar picture. According to the United States Census Bureau, the inflation-adjusted income of African Americans has, with brief interruptions during recessions, increased for every quintile of the income distribution. Despite the Great Recession and the global pandemic, this progress has continued over the past two decades. The income of an African American household at the twentieth percentile of the distribution has increased from about $11,000 to $17,000 since 2002; that of the fortieth percentile from $22,000 to $35,000; that of the sixtieth percentile from $36,000 to $60,000; and that of the eightieth percentile from $60,000 to $100,000.

Of late, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the songs of Manu Chao. There is something compellingly joyous about his music. His is the sort of beat that helps get you out of bed in the morning, the sort of sound you want to have playing on a road trip. During the isolated months of the global pandemic—months during which the compelled loneliness of the shutdowns was, in my case, deepened by the self-imposed discipline required to write a book—I found myself comforted by its promise of adventure to come in the near future. But there is, I now realize, also a deeper reason why I have found myself drawn to albums like Próxima Estación: Esperanza (Next Station: Hope).


pages: 475 words: 127,389

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atul Gawande, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, death of newspapers, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job satisfaction, lockdown, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, meta-analysis, New Journalism, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school choice, security theater, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, trade route, Upton Sinclair, zoonotic diseases

But feeling pity for America? That one is new.”95 The loss of American economic power and the lack of U.S. leadership could create an opening for China to exert more influence, particularly in the developing world, where many countries desperately need help to cope with the virus and where American responses to the global pandemic have not been up to prior standards (though there will also be a backlash against China as the country of origin of the virus and especially given its initial lack of transparency). A lot of power will also flow to those countries that successfully develop a good vaccine or effective medicine.

., “The Case for Universal Cloth Mask Adoption and Policies to Increase the Supply of Medical Masks for Health Workers,” Covid Economics, April 6, 2020. 35 J. Howard et al., “Face Masks Against COVID-19: An Evidence Review,” preprint July 10, 2020. 36 Anonymous, “Czech Video Inspires the World to Wear Face Masks during the Global Pandemic,” Czech Universities, April 6, 2020; R. Tait, “Czechs Get to Work Making Masks after Government Decree,” The Guardian, March 30, 2020. 37 D. Greene, “Police in Czech Republic Tell Nudists to Wear Face Masks,” NPR, April 9, 2020. 38 L. Hensley, “Why Some People Still Refuse to Wear Masks,” Global News, July 9, 2020. 39J.


pages: 490 words: 153,455

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

Ada Lovelace, air traffic controllers' union, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, call centre, capitalist realism, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, desegregation, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, green new deal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, means of production, mini-job, minimum wage unemployment, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, Peter Thiel, post-Fordism, post-work, precariat, profit motive, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school choice, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, War on Poverty, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration

The distribution center or warehouse job has become synonymous with misery these days: stories abound of workers having to urinate into bottles because they’re not allowed enough restroom breaks, being tracked around the facility via GPS, or popping Advil like candy to deal with the aches and pains. Yet even Amazon, in denying the reports of hellish conditions written up by journalist Emily Guendelsberger, touts its “passionate employees, whose pride and commitment are what make the Amazon customer experience great.” 9 The global pandemic in 2020 just made the brutality of the workplace more visible. The amount of people employed in manufacturing worldwide has shrunk, but still the work is done, and more and more of it for pennies and without union protections. Women and children labor in deadly conditions in factories in places like Bangladesh, where the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in 2013 killed 1,132 workers and injured more than 2,000 more.

It was shuttered in April 2018, and the company was liquidated shortly thereafter. Private equity buys up firms that are wobbly through leveraged buyouts that put the debt used to buy them back on the company’s balance sheets; if any more trouble hits a company, whether it be increased competition, in the case of Toys “R” Us, or, more recently, the global pandemic, things can unravel quickly. Once iconic brands like J. Crew and Neiman Marcus have fallen into bankruptcy in this way. 1 What that meant for Reinhart was the loss of a job she’d had for twenty-nine years, with no severance. “It was almost my entire adult life,” she said, shaking her head. “What was I thinking?”


pages: 521 words: 118,183

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Other countries are wrestling with the choice to allow Huawei to build their 5G networks, torn between the sticker price (low) and security risk (high). Many European countries already use Huawei technology in their 4G networks, making it expensive to switch—especially as they grapple with the fallout from a global pandemic. And then there are the strategic calculations. Reflecting on a visit with high-level European defense officials, one Silicon Valley venture capitalist told me he was shocked by their attitude toward China. “Mainland Europe doesn’t feel like the U.S. is anything near the hegemon we once were,” he said.

But why wouldn’t he read an email that appeared to come from his spouse, referenced an inside joke, and asked him to click a link to put their three-year-old daughter on a pre-K waiting list? It’s bad enough that so many Americans get their news from distinct media ecosystems, with major consequences for everything from our political discourse to undermining our ability to combat a global pandemic. In the future, we could see news personalized far beyond the Fox/MSNBC divide. A conspiracy theorist who believes that windmills cause cancer might see nothing but article after article reinforcing that idea. An aunt who implicitly trusts what Barack Obama says might be presented with a deepfake calling a Republican president’s election illegitimate and urging supporters to protest.


pages: 505 words: 138,917

Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg

Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, carbon tax, citizen journalism, classic study, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, green new deal, humanitarian revolution, illegal immigration, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, negative emissions, Network effects, open borders, open economy, Pax Mongolica, place-making, profit motive, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, spice trade, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, ultimatum game, universal basic income, World Values Survey, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

When the viral respiratory disease SARS appeared in southern China in November 2002, the government kept it secret for months, delaying both its own and the world’s response. You would think it had learned the lesson. But history repeated itself with the new coronavirus. Chinese authorities could have stopped it from becoming a global pandemic if they had acted the moment the first cases were discovered, but instead they instinctively silenced whistle-blowers and denied human-to-human transmission. Medical professionals who sounded the alarm about the outbreak were detained by the police. State-run media did not mention the risks for weeks, but warned netizens not to spread rumours about it.

London, Granta Books, 1992, p. 394. 4 ‘ASHG denounces attempts to link genetics and racial supremacy’, The American Journal of Human Genetics, 103, 2018, https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(18)30363-X (accessed 9 March 2020). 5 R. N. Thompson, C.P. Thompson, O. Pelerman, S. Gupta and U. Obolski, ‘Increased frequency of travel may act to decrease the chance of a global pandemic’, Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society of London, 374 (1775), 2019. C. Wilson, ‘Why air travel makes deadly disease pandemics less likely’, New Scientist, 2018, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2184266-why-airtravel-makes-deadly-diseasepandemics-less-likely/(accessed 9 March 2020). 6 M.


pages: 420 words: 135,569

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, airport security, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, fiat currency, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mason jar, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, Minecraft, moral hazard, open borders, pattern recognition, place-making, plant based meat, post-truth, QAnon, QR code, remote working, RFID, risk tolerance, School Strike for Climate, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, stem cell, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator

Southwick, “Association of Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder with Posttraumatic Psychological Growth among US Veterans During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” JAMA Network Open 4, no. 4 (April 2021): e214972, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4972. 6 Leah Zaidi, “Building Brave New Worlds: Science Fiction and Transition Design” (master’s thesis, Ontario College of Art and Design, 2017), 2, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321886159_Building_Brave_New_Worlds_Science_Fiction_and_Transition_Design. 7 Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939; repr., New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 194. 8 Marina Gorbis and Kathi Vian, “Post-COVID-19 Futures: What Can We Build after the Global Pandemic?,” Urgent Futures, Institute for the Future, May 6, 2020, https://medium.com/institute-for-the-future/post-COVID-19-futures-what-can-we-build-after-the-global-pandemic-3cac9515ef20. 9 “After the Pandemic: A Deeper Disease,” Institute for the Future, September 15, 2020, https://www.iftf.org/whathappensnext/. 10 Molly Kinder and Martha Ross, “Reopening America: Low-Wage Workers Have Suffered Badly from COVID-19 so Policymakers Should Focus on Equity,” Brookings Institute, June 23, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/research/reopening-america-low-wage-workers-have-suffered-badly-from-COVID-19-so-policymakers-should-focus-on-equity/; Alyssa Fowers, “Concerns about Missing Work May Be a Barrier to Coronavirus Vaccination,” Washington Post, May 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/27/time-off-vaccine-workers/. 11 Oxfam International, The Inequality Virus: Bringing Together a World Torn Apart by Coronavirus through a Fair, Just and Sustainable Economy (Cowley, Oxford: Oxfam GB, January 2021), https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621149/bp-the-inequality-virus-250121-en.pdf. 12 International Labor Organization, ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the World of Work, 5th ed., June 30, 2020, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_749399.pdf; Courtney Connley, “Women’s Labor Force Participation Rate Hit a 33-Year Low in January, According to New Analysis,” CNBC Make It, February 8, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/womens-labor-force-participation-rate-hit-33-year-low-in-january-2021.html; Catarina Saraiva, “Women Leaving Workforce Again Shows Uneven U.S.


pages: 458 words: 132,912

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Tribalism, then, can endanger the citizens’ national security. During the pandemic itself, Americans were apparently either to agree with the Chinese charge or to cede leverage to Beijing in terror of being called racist again. A Chinese daily newspaper adroitly attacked legitimate American complaints that Chinese laxity had led to a deadly global pandemic with boilerplate charges of racism: “The U.S. and other Western countries’ overreactions to the outbreak in China smack of a ‘segregation’ policy laced with extreme racism.” At a time when African students and visitors were being systematically barred from entering some Chinese stores and restaurants, the China Daily was urging their home governments “to reject the triple Western diseases of xenophobia, ideological bias and the fear of China’s rise.”

Not much later, congressional Democrats and the media advanced the argument that Trump’s presidency indeed should be terminated due to his mental incapacity. As a result, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee organized a conference at Yale where she met with members of Congress and diagnosed Trump as dangerously unfit. Indeed, Lee deemed the president an existential threat to the planet comparable to some sort of global pandemic. “Our survival as a species,” she insisted, “may be at stake.” When during the primary campaign of 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden seemed to exhibit confusion at times about names, dates, and places, Dr. Lee was asked whether she might offer another in absentia analysis but refused. Nonetheless, her idea of removing a president by claiming he was non compos mentis without a physical or mental examination persisted—and took on even stranger manifestations.45 In 2019, fired former deputy and acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabe admitted that he and then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein had earlier discussed the possibility of removing the president from office.


AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, active measures, airport security, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital map, digital rights, digital twin, Elon Musk, fake news, fault tolerance, future of work, Future Shock, game design, general purpose technology, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, information security, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, language acquisition, low earth orbit, Lyft, Maslow's hierarchy, mass immigration, mirror neurons, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, OpenAI, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, smart transportation, Snapchat, social distancing, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, synthetic biology, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, trolley problem, Turing test, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, zero-sum game

We hope that you will embark on this journey with curiosity, an open mind—and an open heart, too. One last thing: For me, the greatest value of science fiction is not providing answers, but rather raising questions. After you close the book, our hope is that lots of new questions will enliven your mind: For instance, can AI help humans prevent the next global pandemic by eliminating it at the very root? How can we deal with future job challenges? How can we maintain cultural diversity in a world dominated by machines? How can we teach our children to live in a society where humans and machines coexist? We hope our readers’ questions will help take us further down the path as we shape a happier and brighter future.

Jennifer forced herself to refocus on the task at hand. Floating in midair, Michael was still talking, while gracefully waving his hands, like a conductor. The video window obeyed his gestures and fluctuated, growing, shrinking, and tilting in concert with Saviour’s movements. “As you have seen, signs of change were already manifest before the global pandemic. The virus merely accelerated things. A large amount of previously offline economic activity went online as people maintained social distancing. The traditional service and manufacturing industries suffered heavy losses. Both were spheres where machines had an advantage.” As Michael gestured, an array of people from different professions appeared and vanished in the midair scroll: cashiers, truck drivers, seamstresses, factory workers, fruit pickers, telemarketers, well-dressed office workers, even doctors.


pages: 689 words: 134,457

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alistair Cooke, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, Bear Stearns, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Citizen Lab, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, data science, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, full employment, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, illegal immigration, income inequality, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job satisfaction, job-hopping, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, load shedding, Mark Zuckerberg, megaproject, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, mortgage debt, Multics, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, profit maximization, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, The future is already here, The Nature of the Firm, too big to fail, urban planning, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

A case can be made that oil companies like Chevron need the smart cadre of McKinsey consultants to guide them through an existential threat to their business model: the global push to move away from fossil fuels. BP and Shell, for example, are scrambling to expand their clean energy businesses. So with an army of McKinsey consultants advising them on strategy, what approach did Chevron choose? Drill, baby, drill. In July 2020, just as the global pandemic was decimating demand for Chevron’s gasoline, the company’s CEO, Mike Wirth, speaking to the Texas Oil & Gas Association, said that the global push for clean energy “doesn’t mean the end of oil and gas,” Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Wirth said that Chevron would “find ways to make oil and gas more efficient, more environmentally benign.”

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Other top McKinsey fossil fuel clients: List of companies from McKinsey internal records. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT If McKinsey was advising: Details on McKinsey’s work with Chevron from McKinsey internal records. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT In July 2020, just as the global pandemic: Kevin Crowley and Bryan Gruley, “Chevron’s Answer to Climate Change Is to Keep Drilling for Oil,” Bloomberg Businessweek, Aug. 13, 2020. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Teck, one of the world’s biggest exporters: For the size of Teck compared with other steelmaking coal exporters, see “Teck: Fact Sheet: Steelmaking Coal.”


pages: 642 words: 141,888

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen

23andMe, 4chan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cloud computing, Columbine, company town, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital map, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Golden age of television, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, growth hacking, Haight Ashbury, immigration reform, James Bridle, John Perry Barlow, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kinder Surprise, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, moral panic, move fast and break things, non-fungible token, PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, systems thinking, tech bro, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Walter Mischel, WikiLeaks, work culture

When the interview ended, one YouTube staffer in attendance privately felt relieved that the Wired editor didn’t pull up searches on YouTube like “flu vaccine,” which were rife with conspiracies. Another person on YouTube’s policy team later said that Wojcicki argued against limiting such videos, citing friends of hers who subscribed to alternative health beliefs that shunned vaccines—a stance she changed once a global pandemic struck. Still, Wojcicki ended the interview on high notes. YouTube had implemented a series of updates she said would purge bad actors abusing its systems. Videos like the Parkland Trending clip were removed for breaking rules against harassment. With new ad filters and controls in place, Wojcicki had persuaded nearly all boycotting brands to spend again.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT said it had not been informed: Megan Farokhmanesh, “YouTube Didn’t Tell Wikipedia About Its Plans for Wikipedia,” The Verge, March 14, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17120918/youtube-wikipedia-conspiracy-theory-partnerships-sxsw. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT global pandemic struck: A YouTube spokesperson said the company “took a strong supportive stance on vaccines from the very beginning” of the COVID-19 pandemic “and was one of the first companies to implement a COVID-vaccine misinfo policy.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 29: 901 Cherry Avenue or Green Nasim: Daisuke Wakabayashi, Thomas Erdbrink, and Matthew Haag, “ ‘Vegan Bodybuilder’: How YouTube Attacker, Nasim Aghdamn, Went Viral in Iran,” The New York Times, April 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/nasim-aghdam-youtube-shooter.html.


pages: 178 words: 52,637

Quality Investing: Owning the Best Companies for the Long Term by Torkell T. Eide, Lawrence A. Cunningham, Patrick Hargreaves

air freight, Albert Einstein, asset light, backtesting, barriers to entry, buy and hold, carbon tax, cashless society, cloud computing, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, discounted cash flows, discovery of penicillin, endowment effect, global pandemic, haute couture, hindsight bias, legacy carrier, low cost airline, mass affluent, Network effects, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, price elasticity of demand, proprietary trading, shareholder value, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, supply-chain management, vertical integration

Both companies grew significantly and at the time of the reunification, which brought an end to over 60 years of competition, they were the second and third ranked players in the diabetes space, behind Eli Lilly. Diabetes treatment now accounts for around three-quarters of Novo Nordisk’s profit. The incidence of diabetes globally has increased rapidly in the last decade, driven by the global pandemic of obesity – now numbering more than 600 million people and forecast to continue rising. Demand for diabetes treatment will, we believe, increase more rapidly due to rising diagnosis rates; as will the continued need for better treatments and broader reach of care (fewer than 10% of afflicted people receive effective care).


pages: 197 words: 53,831

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference by Alice Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, decarbonisation, diversification, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, family office, food miles, Future Shock, global pandemic, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green transition, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, off grid, oil shock, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, precision agriculture, risk tolerance, risk/return, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, William MacAskill

The average retail investor cannot just load up their portfolio with bonds and ignore equities. The traditional advice when investing is to spread risk across various asset classes as well as sectors, on the assumption that they won’t all fall in value at once – except in exceptional circumstances, such as the global pandemic experienced in 2020. Private equity Private equity investors take a stake in an unlisted company: one that is still private and hasn’t floated on the stock market. While equities and bond funds form part of a normal portfolio for an average retail investor, private equity is often only advised for those with more money to invest.


pages: 661 words: 156,009

Your Computer Is on Fire by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip

"Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, digital divide, digital map, don't be evil, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, fake news, financial innovation, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Landlord’s Game, Lewis Mumford, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mobile money, moral panic, move fast and break things, Multics, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, old-boy network, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), packet switching, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, postindustrial economy, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Salesforce, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart cities, Snapchat, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, telepresence, the built environment, the map is not the territory, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, Y2K

It tends to attract engineering students looking for a humanities elective, despite—or because of—the disturbing subject matter. When I designed the course, I knew that it would be a major draw because, even if a person might not wish for bad things to happen, when bad things do happen, it’s often difficult to look away. I never imagined that I would be teaching the course in the middle of a global pandemic. As we shifted our class online in March 2020 in order to safeguard our health, our lives, and the lives of those around us, and to try to slow a deadly and highly transmissible virus, I found myself thinking about other types of destructive virality, and about October 2019, when I watched Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress.

The larger lesson, however, is that regulatory agencies that should have prevented disasters like the 737 Max tragedy had been stripped of their ability to do so, and whole sectors that require regulation, like web technologies and online communication platforms, effectively have no external oversight bodies. In the US since 2016, instead of more regulatory safeguards put into place by a democratically elected government, we have seen runaway centralization and the destruction of regulatory and safety agencies under an increasingly authoritarian federal government. During a global pandemic this has meant that even healthcare supplies and vital public information have been withheld from citizens and state governments. Scientists and epidemiologists at the CDC and NIH have been increasingly forced out or muzzled, and many of the teams dedicated to pandemic response had been dissolved prior to the COVID-19 crisis, leaving a gaping hole of expertise where our disaster response should have been.


Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair, Matthew D. Laplante

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Atul Gawande, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biofilm, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, creative destruction, CRISPR, dark matter, dematerialisation, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, helicopter parent, income inequality, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, life extension, Louis Pasteur, McMansion, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, plutocrats, power law, quantum entanglement, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, seminal paper, Skype, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, union organizing, universal basic income, WeWork, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Ensuring the next big outbreak never happens could be the greatest gift of the biotracking revolution. Individually, of course, real-time monitoring of vitals and body chemicals offers incredible benefits for optimizing health and preventing emergencies. Collectively, though, it could help us get ahead of a global pandemic. CHANGE IN LIFE EXPECTANCY DURING THE 1918 FLU EPIDEMIC. Source: S. L. Knobler, A. Mack, A. Mahmoud, and S. M. Lemon, eds., The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? Workshop Summary, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2005), https://doi.org/10.17226/11150, PMID: 20669448.

And today, with each new human life, our planet becomes more crowded, hurtling us toward, or perhaps further beyond, what it can sustain. How many is too many? One report, which examined sixty-five different scientific projections, concluded that the most common estimated “carrying capacity” of our planet is 8 billion.7 That’s just about where we’re at right now. And barring a nuclear holocaust or a global pandemic of historically deadly proportions—nothing anyone in his or her right mind would ever wish for—that’s not where our population is going to peak. When the Pew Research Center polled members of the largest association of scientists in the world, 82 percent said that there isn’t enough food and other resources on this planet for its fast-growing human population.8 Among those who held that opinion was Frank Fenner, an eminent Australian scientist who helped bring an end to one of the world’s deadliest diseases as the chairman of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication.


Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom, Milan M. Cirkovic

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anthropic principle, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, availability heuristic, backpropagation, behavioural economics, Bill Joy: nanobots, Black Swan, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charles Babbage, classic study, cognitive bias, complexity theory, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, death of newspapers, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, Doomsday Clock, Drosophila, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, false flag, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, means of production, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, mutually assured destruction, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, P = NP, peak oil, phenotype, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, South China Sea, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, The Coming Technological Singularity, the long tail, The Turner Diaries, Tunguska event, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, uranium enrichment, Vernor Vinge, War on Poverty, Westphalian system, Y2K

Since 1 976, when Ebola first appeared in Zaire, there have been intermittent outbreaks of the disease, often along Sub-Saharan African rainforests where the virus is transmitted from other primates to humans. The remoteness of these regions, and the rapid pace by which these viruses kill their human host, have thus far precluded a global pandemic. H owever, if these pathogens were procured, aerosolized, and released in busy urban centres or hubs, a catastrophic pandemic might ensue - particularly because attempts to generate vaccines to Ebola have, thus far, proven unsuccessful. In 1992, the Aum Shinrikyo sent a medical team to Zaire in what is believed to have been an attempt to procure Ebola virus ( Kaplan, 2000) .

(January 2003). Enhanced: Moore's law forever? Science, 299(5604), 2 1 0-2 1 1 . Moore, G . ( 1 9 April 1965). Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics Magazine, 1 14-1 17. Murray, C.)., Lopez, A.D., Chin, B., Feehan, D., and Hill, K. H . (23 December 2006). Estimation of potential global pandemic influenza mortality on the basis of vital registry data from the 1918-20 pandemic: a quantitative analysis. The Lancet, 368(9554) , 2 2 1 1-22 18. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. (2004). The 9/1 1 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton). National Research Council. (2003a).

103 Gilovich, T. 99 GIRO 1 74, 182 GISP2 ice core, effect ofToba eruption 207 glaciation cycles 268, 358 effects on biodiversity 256 Milankovitch theory 240-1 relationship to cosmic ray flux 2 5 1 -2 Global Brain scenario 80 global catastrophic risk study as a single field 1-2 taxonomy 2-6 global cooling after asteroid impact 2 3 1 nuclear winter 208, 381, 390-2 as result of dust shower 2 3 3 volcanic eruptions 2 0 5 , 207-9, 2 10, 2 1 3 , 269-71 globalization, pandemic risk 1 7 global nuclear war 388-9 nuclear winter 390-2 Global Outbreak and Response Network (GOARN), WHO 471 Global Public Health Information Network ( G P H I N ) , WHO 470, 471 global totalitarianism 26, 67, 509-10 probability 5 16-17 risk factors politics 5 1 2-14 molecular manufacturing 492-4, 498 technology 5 1 1-12 risk management politics 5 1 5-16 technology 5 14-1 5 global war, risk from molecular manufacturing 489-92, 496-7, 498-9 global warming viii-ix, 5, 1 5 , 185, 243-4, 258 after asteroid impact 2 3 1 agricultural consequences 6 5 cost-benefit analysis 192-200 due to brightening of Sun 34 historical 1 91-2 public policy 191-200 Kyoto Protocol 190-1 relationship to solar activity 250-1 sea level rise, evolutionary consequences 5 5 gluons 350 Index 540 God, anthropomorphic bias 3 1 0 Goiania radiological incident (1987), psychological consequences 430 Goleman, D. 62 good cause dump 106 Good, I .


pages: 223 words: 58,732

The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, call centre, carried interest, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, computer age, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Santayana, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, microaggression, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, one-China policy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, telepresence, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

The more our elites call for ‘thought leadership’ and ‘disruptive thinking’, the less they seem to mean it. Buzz terms, such as resiliency, global governance, multi-stakeholder collaboration and digital public square, are the answer to every problem, regardless of its nature. Too many wars happening? We need more collaboration. High risk of another global pandemic? More stakeholder participation. Populist revolts convulsing the Western world? We must rebuild trust in global governance. For every risk, Davos offers an identikit fix. Most of its Latinate prose sounds innocuous. But the lexicon betrays a worldview that is inherently wary of public opinion.


pages: 198 words: 59,351

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning by Justin E. H. Smith

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Adrian Hon, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic management, artificial general intelligence, Big Tech, Charles Babbage, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark matter, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, game design, gamification, global pandemic, GPT-3, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kuiper Belt, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meme stock, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, passive income, Potemkin village, printed gun, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, Silicon Valley, Skype, strong AI, technological determinism, theory of mind, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, Turing machine, Turing test, you are the product

In our own day we have witnessed the extension of the concept of natural selection from the genetic level of analysis, of interest in the study of biological evolution, to the “memetic” level, of interest in the study of communication networks. The fact that the idea of the meme has caught on so succesfully is itself an instance of memetic selection. Viruses are another example of the cross-fertility between information science and life science. The current global pandemic is in the course of revolutionizing our language in profound ways. One of the most significant changes however is not so much a revolution as a restoration: at just the moment in history when a derived and secondary sense of “virus” (as in “computer virus,” “viral meme,” “viral celebrity,” “to go viral”) was poised to move into first place, a real virus, a harmful biological agent, came roaring into history to remind us of its enduring primacy.


pages: 213 words: 61,911

In defense of food: an eater's manifesto by Michael Pollan

back-to-the-land, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, Gary Taubes, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, placebo effect, Upton Sinclair

An American born in 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes in his lifetime; the risk is even greater for a Hispanic American or African American. A diagnosis of diabetes subtracts roughly twelve years from one’s life and living with the condition incurs medical costs of $13,000 a year (compared with $2,500 for someone without diabetes). This is a global pandemic in the making, but a most unusual one, because it involves no virus or bacteria, no microbe of any kind—just a way of eating. It remains to be seen whether we’ll respond by changing our diet or our culture and economy. Although an estimated 80 percent of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by a change of diet and exercise, it looks like the smart money is instead on the creation of a vast new diabetes industry.


pages: 181 words: 62,775

Half Empty by David Rakoff

airport security, Buckminster Fuller, dark matter, double helix, gentrification, global pandemic, Google Earth, Herbert Marcuse, phenotype, RFID, subprime mortgage crisis, twin studies, urban planning, urban renewal, wage slave, Wall-E, Y2K

Eventually it would be taken off the market when it came to light that the bacon bits were nothing more than highly salted, air-puffed balsa wood, but before all that there would be television commercials showing happy couples sprinkling their Seasons of Love® over salads, or laughingly feeding one another bites of baked potato festively speckled with the stuff, like someone had just celebrated New Year’s all over your food. In Rent, the characters live out their Seasons of Love in huge Manhattan lofts. Some of them have AIDS, which, coincidentally, is also the name of a dreaded global pandemic that is still raging and has killed millions of people worldwide. In Rent, AIDS seems only to render one cuter and cuter. The characters are artists. Creative types. Some of them are homosexual, and the ones who aren’t don’t seem to mind. They screen their calls and when it is their parents they roll their eyes.


pages: 219 words: 63,495

50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know by Richard Watson

23andMe, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon credits, Charles Babbage, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, computer age, computer vision, crowdsourcing, dark matter, dematerialisation, Dennis Tito, digital Maoism, digital map, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, energy security, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, gamification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, hive mind, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, life extension, Mark Shuttleworth, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peak oil, personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, private spaceflight, profit maximization, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Florida, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, semantic web, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, smart transportation, space junk, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, telepresence, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Turing test, urban decay, Vernor Vinge, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, women in the workforce, working-age population, young professional

Moreover, the USA has a track record of successfully assimilating immigrants. As a result it’s likely to see a rise in the size of its working-age population and to witness strong economic growth over the longer term. Of course, all these estimates could be wildly off the mark. Perhaps another great famine, global pandemic or a world war could kill off billions of people, or maybe people will suddenly start having much larger families for reasons of economic survival or for status. In theory, demographic forecasting is a relatively scientific field, but in reality it can be subject to the vagaries of the future just like anything else.


pages: 196 words: 61,981

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang

4chan, AI winter, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, cloud computing, Community Supported Agriculture, computer vision, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, drop ship, emotional labour, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, gig economy, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Huaqiangbei: the electronics market of Shenzhen, China, hype cycle, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, job automation, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer lending, precision agriculture, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, SoftBank, software is eating the world, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological solutionism, the long tail, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, Y Combinator, zoonotic diseases

And thank you, Helen Mirra, for your wisdom and walks, which teach me to “let go, let go, let go.” This book would not be possible without my aunt and uncle, Victor Wang and Jacqueline Chen, who gave me their unwavering support and a home in Guangzhou. Thank you to my mother, who continues to diligently feed people in the middle of a global pandemic, and to my grandmother, who remains ever present in my life. And Ian Pearce: I am always grateful for your patience, support, and endless good humor. The intellectual and spiritual influences of this book are many. Yet it all began with the cookbooks and food writings of Buwei Chao, M.F.K. Fisher, Jessica B.


pages: 210 words: 62,278

No One Succeeds Alone by Robert Reffkin

Albert Einstein, coronavirus, COVID-19, financial independence, George Floyd, global pandemic, hiring and firing, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, market design, pattern recognition, Salesforce, Steve Jobs, young professional

Discovering electricity—then bringing it to every home in America in the twentieth century Ending slavery in America Engineering a flying vehicle that weighs hundreds of tons and can soar through the air at hundreds of miles an hour while carrying hundreds of people Measuring the size of the universe using only math and telescopes Eradicating diseases that had killed hundreds of millions of people worldwide Climbing Mount Everest and skiing to both the South Pole and the North Pole in a single lifetime Walking on the moon and returning to Earth Taking a heart from one person and putting it into the body of another person to save a life Discovering DNA, sequencing it, then figuring out how to modify it letter by letter Creating a supercomputer that fits in your pocket Turning an online bookstore into a trillion-dollar company Searching all of the world’s information in less than a second Building a map of the entire world that knows where you are and how to get anywhere you want to go Creating “meat” without animals Lifting a billion people out of abject poverty in the last twenty-five years Battling a global pandemic Look back at your to-do list now. Do you see anything that still looks impossible? Spend your time with people who give you energy Why I love young people who are the first in their family to go to college There’s no way I’d be where I am today if it hadn’t been for the mentorship, professional development, summer internships, and support I received in high school and college.


pages: 199 words: 63,844

Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic by Rachel Clarke

Airbnb, Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disruptive innovation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, social distancing, zero-sum game

The added stresses of winter and seasonal flu are enough to tip us annually into full-blown crisis. Patients on trolleys lining hospital corridors are now grimly iconic of an NHS pared to the bone. And this is categorically not a sign of NHS robustness. Quite the opposite. How can a health service so stripped of spare capacity cope with the demands of a once-ina-lifetime global pandemic? I bite my lip and think longingly of Germany’s twenty-nine intensive care beds per 100,000 people – four times the number of ICU beds in Britain. It gets worse. The Channel 4 News health and social care editor, Victoria Macdonald, asks the Prime Minister if he has yet to develop his own personal policy on shaking hands.


pages: 205 words: 61,903

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

Taking their cue from Tesla founder Elon Musk colonizing Mars , Palantir’s Peter Thiel reversing the aging process , or artificial intelligence developers Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether. Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us. These people once showered the world with madly optimistic business plans for how technology might benefit human society. Now they’ve reduced technological progress to a video game that one of them wins by finding the escape hatch.


Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes

global pandemic, young professional

Designed to help visitors put their problems into perspective, it had told various tales of human misfortune. Along with the accounts of sinking ships was a series of photographs of a village lost to a mudslide, only its skewed rooftops visible above the new ground level, then there had been a short video presentation about a city decimated by a cloud of toxic gas, and an interactive timeline of global pandemics. Pavarotti’s wife had been pleased with this room, but as time went by she started to worry that it might not lift everybody’s spirits in the way she had intended, that some people might think it just a little on the negative side. After many sleepless nights she had decided to dismantle it and approach the same territory from a more positive angle, one that was in no way open to misinterpretation.


pages: 210 words: 65,833

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain by William Davies

Airbnb, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, centre right, Chelsea Manning, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, credit crunch, data science, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, fake news, family office, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, ghettoisation, gig economy, global pandemic, global village, illegal immigration, Internet of things, Jeremy Corbyn, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, liberal capitalism, loadsamoney, London Interbank Offered Rate, mass immigration, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Northern Rock, old-boy network, post-truth, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, prediction markets, quantitative easing, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, web of trust, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

The crisis ushered in by coronavirus has accelerated the need to find this common ground between the defenders of institutional norms and those who agitate for economic justice. Long-standing liberal–socialist ideals, such as universal basic income, have acquired unprecedented plausibility in the context of the global pandemic. If this moment is to be seized by something other than nationalism or a type of privatised platform technocracy, a coalition of legal and economic rebuilders will be needed. Acknowledgements The pieces in this book were originally published in the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, openDemocracy and the blog of the Political Economy Research Centre.


pages: 274 words: 63,679

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America by Angie Schmitt

active transport: walking or cycling, autonomous vehicles, car-free, congestion pricing, COVID-19, crossover SUV, desegregation, Donald Trump, Elaine Herzberg, gentrification, global pandemic, high-speed rail, invention of air conditioning, Lyft, megacity, move fast and break things, off-the-grid, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, wikimedia commons

It was a bad analogy in a lot of ways, but it helped emphasize the strange tolerance we have in our culture for traffic deaths and how they can desensitize us to other forms of cruelty and injustice. It is also worth noting that while a bad economy may hide them, it won’t fix the problems addressed in the book. Before the global pandemic, we had settled into a “new normal” where pedestrian deaths were consistently about 50% higher than they had been a generation before. So without a change in some of the contributing factors (vehicle styles and weights, engineering conventions, demographic trends), when the economy rebounds, I would expect to see the same pattern emerge.


pages: 287 words: 69,655

Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

affirmative action, Airbnb, cognitive bias, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, digital map, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, General Magic , global pandemic, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Paul Graham, peak-end rule, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Sam Altman, science of happiness, selection bias, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, systematic bias, Tony Fadell, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, urban planning, Y Combinator

How many unsuccessful companies didn’t pivot to a new idea when they realized their current one wasn’t working? Airbnb didn’t necessarily get unusually lucky. They capitalized on the luck that anybody who works hard can expect. And, as lucky as Airbnb had historically been or seemed to be, they got an unusually bad luck draw when a global pandemic stopped people from traveling. Shortly after the pandemic started, Airbnb’s bookings dropped 72 percent; its estimated valuation fell from $31 billion to $18 billion; and the company was forced to put their IPO on hold. But, like all extremely successful businesses, Airbnb was good at working around their unlucky breaks.


One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, assortative mating, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business logic, carbon footprint, carbon tax, classic study, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, congestion charging, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cross-subsidies, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, gentrification, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Induced demand, industrial cluster, Kowloon Walled City, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, Mercator projection, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, New Urbanism, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, secular stagnation, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, superstar cities, tech worker, the built environment, Thomas Malthus, transit-oriented development, white flight, working-age population, Yogi Berra

The truth is that according to the Federal Aviation Administration there are only three capacity-constrained airports in the whole country—it just happens that two of them are in New York and the other is the one members of Congress use to fly home to their districts. These are important cities, and their airport-crowding issues underscore the fact that investing in high-speed rail, specifically in the Northeast corridor, could be very useful. But for most Americans the more relevant problem—at least when air service isn’t interrupted by a global pandemic—is that the airport they live closest to has only so many direct flights. That means there’s little competition on routes, limited flexibility in schedules, and simple logistical difficulties in getting from one place to another. In a day-to-day sense this won’t manifest itself as a serious problem because most people rarely fly.


pages: 252 words: 66,183

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray

Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Black Lives Matter, car-free, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, clean water, confounding variable, COVID-19, desegregation, Donald Shoup, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, game design, garden city movement, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, industrial cluster, Jane Jacobs, job-hopping, land bank, lone genius, mass immigration, McMansion, mortgage tax deduction, Overton Window, parking minimums, restrictive zoning, rewilding, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Silicon Valley, SimCity, starchitect, streetcar suburb, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, transit-oriented development, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty

While newer deed restrictions don’t often disappear in this way, reapproval votes still offer an opportunity to periodically audit the rules. This can result in deed restrictions being incrementally liberalized—say, to allow accessory dwelling units in the face of rising rents, or home-based businesses in response to a global pandemic. More commonly, unwanted deed restrictions will simply wither away by neglect. Unlike zoning, deed restrictions only survive to the extent that they are actively enforced—if certain rules are persistently ignored, or areas of the neighborhood are given a free pass, a court may eventually consider the deed restriction unenforceable.


pages: 651 words: 186,130

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

4chan, active measures, activist lawyer, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boeing 737 MAX, Brexit referendum, Brian Krebs, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Vincenzetti, defense in depth, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, index card, information security, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Menlo Park, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral hazard, Morris worm, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, NSO Group, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open borders, operational security, Parler "social media", pirate software, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, Seymour Hersh, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

For years, intelligence agencies rationalized the concealment of digital vulnerabilities as critical to monitoring America’s adversaries, to war-planning, to our national security. But those rationalizations are buckling. They ignore the fact that the internet, like so much we are now witnessing in a global pandemic, has left us inextricably connected. Digital vulnerabilities that affect one affect us all. The barrier between the physical and digital worlds is wearing thin. “Everything can be intercepted” is right, and most everything important already has—our personal data, our intellectual property, our chemical factories, our nuclear plants, even our own cyberweapons.

These are the critical assignments of our time. Many will say they are impossible, but we have summoned the best of our scientific community, government, industry, and everyday people to overcome existential challenges before. Why can’t we do it again? As I write these final words, I am sheltering-in-place from a global pandemic. I am watching the world ask the same questions—Why weren’t we better prepared? Why didn’t we have enough testing? Enough protective gear? Better warning systems? A recovery plan?—knowing full well these questions apply to the cyber domain too. I’m crossing my fingers that the next big cyberattack waits until this pandemic has passed.


pages: 498 words: 184,761

The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland by Ali Winston, Darwin Bondgraham

affirmative action, anti-communist, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bear Stearns, Black Lives Matter, Broken windows theory, Chelsea Manning, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, COVID-19, crack epidemic, defund the police, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Ferguson, Missouri, friendly fire, full employment, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Golden Gate Park, mass incarceration, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, Oklahoma City bombing, old-boy network, Port of Oakland, power law, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, white flight, WikiLeaks, Yogi Berra

Corruption, brutality, secrecy, and racism have always shaped policing. Because of the inordinate power bestowed on law enforcement, these abuses cause immense damage to society. This is why tens of millions of Americans, and people around the world, marched in the streets in the summer of 2020—amidst a global pandemic—to call for an end to police killings of Black people, and a reimagining of public safety. The street demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man whose neck was knelt on by a Minneapolis police officer for over eight minutes because he was suspected of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, were estimated to be the largest in the nation’s history.

Much of the chapters on the 2000s and the 2010s would not be possible in their current state without the documents and dozens of video and audio recordings Sam was able to force the city to turn over. Our editor at Atria Books, Amar Deol, understood our vision for Riders from our first conversation. He was a steady hand during two years of intensive writing in the midst of a global pandemic. David Patterson, our agent, helped mold a sprawling jumble of chapters into a tight, coherent proposal that served as a reliable structure for the final draft. Thanks also to Elizabeth Hitti, Phillip Bashe, and the entire team at Atria and Simon & Schuster, and to John Pelosi for his astute legal read.


Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics by Francis Fukuyama

Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, cognitive bias, contact tracing, cuban missile crisis, currency risk, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, flex fuel, global pandemic, Herman Kahn, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John von Neumann, low interest rates, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Norbert Wiener, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, packet switching, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, Yom Kippur War

Whether or not they come true in exactly the ways outlined here, the world’s business and government leaders will be immeasurably better off if they carefully consider how these scenarios could come to pass and act today to create maneuvering room for the radically different world that these game-changing events could create. 2990-7 ch10 lempert 7/23/07 12:13 PM Page 109 10 Can Scenarios Help Policymakers Be Both Bold and Careful? Robert Lempert S urprise, of both good and bad varieties, has become a ubiquitous feature of the world facing American policymakers. Leaders have come to expect adverse surprises, from terrorist attacks to global pandemics to signs that global warming is emerging faster than previously imagined. But many of the most serious, festering problems facing the United States—from encouraging a free, just, and stable global order to ensuring that the American middle class can thrive in a globalized world—also require leaders who can transform some of what seem like today’s inexorable trends.


pages: 285 words: 78,180

Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life by J. Craig Venter

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 11, Asilomar, Barry Marshall: ulcers, bioinformatics, borderless world, Brownian motion, clean water, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, discovery of DNA, double helix, dual-use technology, epigenetics, experimental subject, global pandemic, Gregor Mendel, Helicobacter pylori, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, John von Neumann, Louis Pasteur, Mars Rover, Mikhail Gorbachev, phenotype, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, stem cell, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Turing machine

Another critical step toward advanced synthetic-based influenza vaccines is the integration and scale-up of synthetic vaccine seeds with full-scale manufacturing to enable commercial vaccine production. Novartis is starting to make this a reality—a reality that has enormous implications for the global pandemic response. The speed, ease, and accuracy with which higher-yielding influenza vaccine seeds can be produced using synthetic techniques promises not only more rapid future pandemic responses but a more reliable supply of pandemic influenza vaccines. While vaccines are the best means of prevention against pandemics, and synthetic biology has helped us to make them more effective, we are now facing another major threat from infection, as one of humankind’s most important weapons in the fight against disease, antibiotics, are rapidly becoming compromised.


pages: 252 words: 79,452

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O'Connell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Picking Challenge, artificial general intelligence, Bletchley Park, Boston Dynamics, brain emulation, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, computer age, cosmological principle, dark matter, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, double helix, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Extropian, friendly AI, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, impulse control, income inequality, invention of the wheel, Jacques de Vaucanson, John von Neumann, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, life extension, lifelogging, Lyft, Mars Rover, means of production, military-industrial complex, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, profit motive, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Singularitarianism, Skype, SoftBank, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, superintelligent machines, tech billionaire, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, uber lyft, Vernor Vinge

One of the more remarkable phenomena in this area was the existence of a number of research institutes and think tanks substantially devoted to raising awareness about what was known as “existential risk”—the risk of absolute annihilation of the species, as distinct from mere catastrophes like climate change or nuclear war or global pandemics—and to running the algorithms on how we might avoid this particular fate. There was the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, and the Centre for Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, and the Future of Life Institute in Boston, which latter outfit featured on its board of scientific advisors not just prominent figures from science and technology like Musk and Hawking and the pioneering geneticist George Church, but also, for some reason, the beloved film actors Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman.


pages: 269 words: 72,752

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, fear of failure, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, impulse control, junk bonds, Maui Hawaii, messenger bag, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, zero-sum game

My best guess at the time was that that would occur through a disaster of his own making, such as an avoidable war he either provoked or stumbled into. I couldn’t have anticipated how many people would willingly enable his worst instincts, which have resulted in government-sanctioned kidnapping of children, detaining of refugees at the border, and betrayal of our allies, among other atrocities. And I couldn’t have foreseen that a global pandemic would present itself, allowing him to display his grotesque indifference to the lives of other people. Donald’s initial response to COVID-19 underscores his need to minimize negativity at all costs. Fear—the equivalent of weakness in our family—is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old.


pages: 265 words: 75,202

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, big-box store, Blue Ocean Strategy, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Brooks, do well by doing good, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), fear of failure, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, lockdown, long term incentive plan, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, old-boy network, pension reform, performance metric, popular capitalism, pre–internet, race to the bottom, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, risk/return, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, young professional, zero-sum game

And I am especially grateful to my parents, who have taught me the importance of hard work and decency, to my children for their love, their ideas, and their encouragement, and to Hortense for her miraculous support and partnership. Caroline Lambert Working on this book has been a joy and an inspiration. Thank you, Hubert Joly, for inviting me to share your book adventure. And what an adventure it was! We made it through several relocations, major life changes, a global pandemic, Wi-Fi breakdowns, and countless hours over Zoom. Thank you for trusting me with your ideas and stories, for responding to my questions and prodding with such grace, and for offering an inspiring vision of business—so very different from the corporate world I fled many years ago. Thank you also for your patience, kindness, generosity, and positivity.


pages: 211 words: 78,547

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by Fredrik Deboer

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, David Brooks, defund the police, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, helicopter parent, income inequality, lockdown, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, post-materialism, profit motive, QAnon, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, social distancing, TikTok, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, working poor, zero-sum game

That conversation just happened to exemplify my sense that American progressive movements are forever wandering from the righteous to the ridiculous. In 2020, a year that was sold at the time as a moment of unique political foment—as a “reckoning”—we saw the American progressive movement drift from the essential to the inconsequential, from the material to the illusory, in much the same way. Early that year, an unprecedented global pandemic bloomed in front of our eyes. The novel coronavirus Covid-19 exploded out from China and across the face of the globe in the span of a few months. There have been deadlier diseases, and there have been diseases that have wrought more havoc, but there had never before been a disease that so took advantage of a globalized and interconnected Earth, of our now-small world.


pages: 239 words: 74,845

The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees by Ben Mezrich

4chan, Asperger Syndrome, Bayesian statistics, bitcoin, Carl Icahn, contact tracing, data science, democratizing finance, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, gamification, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Hyperloop, meme stock, Menlo Park, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, security theater, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Two Sigma, value at risk, wealth creators

If the “retards” and “apes” continued to be right, held their diamond hands, the stock could go much, much higher. And even if Wall Street did figure out a way to fire back, if the government stepped in, even if Sara lost—at least she could say she had been part of something great, of the little guys sticking it to the elite. Sticking it to the fat cats who were making fortunes off a global pandemic, while people died and even more lost their jobs. She really and truly wanted to be involved. And this would be her thing, hers alone. She could continue to keep it a secret, until maybe one day, when her son or daughter grew up, she could tell him or her about it. They could laugh together about the ridiculous memes, and maybe Sara would be able to show her child how once, just once, the little guys had stuck together and won.


pages: 244 words: 78,238

Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic by Michael Smith, Jonathan Franklin

airport security, Boeing 747, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Port of Oakland, Snapchat, social distancing, Suez canal 1869

On March 18, the company ordered 6,000 surgical masks, 600 surgical gowns, and 4,800 pairs of protective gloves for the Zaandam from a marine medical supplier on Staten Island, an internal invoice shows. Getting the supplies on board could take many days because no country was allowing the ship to dock. But beyond the medical center and the cabins where the sick languished, the cruise had to continue. The global pandemic shutdown was advancing on land—universities, offices, restaurants, and schools were closing across the world. Towns, cities, and entire nations were imposing curfews and the mandatory use of face masks. On the Zaandam, the opposite was occurring. The crew, following corporate’s mandate, tempted passengers with group activities.


pages: 314 words: 75,678

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

agricultural Revolution, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, fear of failure, Ford Model T, global pandemic, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of air conditioning, Louis Pasteur, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, oil shock, performance metric, plant based meat, purchasing power parity, risk tolerance, social distancing, Solyndra, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, the High Line, urban planning, yield management

Because we want to compare events that happen at different points in time—the pandemic in 2020 and climate change in, say, 2030—and the global population will change in that time, we can’t compare the absolute numbers of deaths. Instead we will use the death rate: that is, the number of deaths per 100,000 people. Using data from the Spanish flu of 1918 and the COVID-19 pandemic and averaging it out over the course of a century, we can estimate the amount by which a global pandemic increases the global mortality rate. It’s about 14 deaths per 100,000 people each year. How does that compare to climate change? By mid-century, increases in global temperatures are projected to raise global mortality rates by the same amount—14 deaths per 100,000. By the end of the century, if emissions growth stays high, climate change could be responsible for 75 extra deaths per 100,000 people.


pages: 250 words: 79,360

Escape From Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson

Alan Greenspan, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Black Swan, butterfly effect, carbon tax, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, decarbonisation, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Emanuel Derman, Financial Modelers Manifesto, fudge factor, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, hindcast, I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations, implied volatility, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John von Neumann, junk bonds, Kim Stanley Robinson, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, moral hazard, mouse model, Myron Scholes, Nate Silver, Neal Stephenson, negative emissions, paperclip maximiser, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, random walk, risk tolerance, selection bias, self-driving car, social distancing, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, systematic bias, tacit knowledge, tail risk, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Great Resignation, the scientific method, too big to fail, trolley problem, value at risk, volatility smile, Y2K

Could this be it? In the alert that followed the discovery in New Jersey, the CDC found no other swine flu traceable to pigs: the Fort Dix outbreak was the only established instance of person-to-person transmission, and the Northern Hemisphere flu season was at an end. But the possibility of a new global pandemic emerging from these beginnings could not be discounted. Scientists nervous about the prospect of the winter season to come were unable to rule out the worst-case scenarios. Manufacturers of vaccines would need the whole summer to produce enough doses to vaccinate most of the population, so some kind of decision had to be taken very quickly.


pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman

23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, future of work, game design, gamification, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, high net worth, High speed trading, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, illegal immigration, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, lifelogging, litecoin, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, national security letter, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, operational security, optical character recognition, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, printed gun, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tech worker, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wave and Pay, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, you are the product, zero day

Yet by making a mere four genetic mutations, the Dutch-American team was able to engineer a much more virulent strain capable of going airborne, vastly increasing its transmissibility to human beings and effectively weaponizing it. The original goal of the research was to study how quickly H5N1 might evolve in order to better prevent its spread, but the genetically altered strain, if released, could readily lead to a global pandemic. In the name of science, the researchers wanted to publish their findings, including the genetic code of the more virulent strain they had created, in the journals Science and Nature, but many contended doing so would be akin to providing a recipe book to terrorists to build bioweapons. In the end, for the first time ever, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity stepped in and asked the journals to limit the details published, to which they temporarily agreed.

Who knows what kid in Jaipur or what grandmother in Milwaukee while hacking away at synbio will make that game-changing cancer-fighting breakthrough we’ve all been hoping for? But it is also just as likely that among the masses will be those few bad actors who can use the same technologies to create a global pandemic. This should give us pause. We should be thinking more deeply and seriously about our use of exponential technologies, their downsides, and the potential for harm they may bring. Although space attacks, evil AI, and gray goo may be low on our list of personal priorities, far below the rush to pick up the kids at school, there are a mass of threats that demand our immediate attention.


pages: 286 words: 82,970

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order by Richard Haass

access to a mobile phone, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, carbon tax, central bank independence, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, global pandemic, global reserve currency, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, immigration reform, invisible hand, low interest rates, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, no-fly zone, open economy, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

The problem with such thinking is that history suggests that crises do not automatically generate the impetus for necessary change on the scale that is required. There is as well the problem that crisis by definition can be extremely costly. Conflict between two or more powers, a nuclear event brought about by a state or terrorists, significant climate change, a global pandemic, the collapse of the world trade system—it would be hard to exaggerate the costs if any of these were to happen. Surely a better way would be to start moving toward an international order without waiting for a crisis. The case and the potential for doing so could hardly be more compelling.


pages: 294 words: 87,429

In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's by Joseph Jebelli

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, CRISPR, double helix, Easter island, Edward Jenner, epigenetics, global pandemic, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, parabiotic, phenotype, placebo effect, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Skype, stem cell, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, traumatic brain injury

This is astounding considering that an additional 7.7 million cases (that we know of) are reported every year. It seems a more horrifying kind of forgetting is taking place in our world. We are forgetting them. If things continue this way, epidemiologists estimate that the total number of Alzheimer’s cases will double every twenty years, making dementia the next global pandemic. In that event, the current 46 million patients would represent no more than the tip of a vast, society-crippling iceberg. So after a century of Alzheimer’s research, a journey that’s spanned the globe and brought with it a kaleidoscope of blind alleys, high hopes and stark tragedy, the final question is one that’s been with us from the very beginning.


pages: 286 words: 87,401

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, database schema, DeepMind, Didi Chuxing, discounted cash flows, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, fulfillment center, Future Shock, George Gilder, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, high-speed rail, hockey-stick growth, hydraulic fracturing, Hyperloop, initial coin offering, inventory management, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, late fees, Lean Startup, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Quicken Loans, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, thinkpad, three-martini lunch, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, web application, winner-take-all economy, work culture , Y Combinator, yellow journalism

On the other hand, there are technologies emerging from blitzscaling companies that could pose real, systemic problems (yet get far less media attention). Synthetic biology, driven by CRISPR-Cas9 targeted genome editing, has the potential to produce huge benefits in medicine and agribusiness, but brings with it the systemic risk of bad actors engineering a deadly global pandemic. Changes and developments in this field have occurred so quickly that it is difficult for governments to create intelligent regulatory regimes to manage these risks. Responsible blitzscalers should give serious considerations to systemic risks and seek structural dialogue that involves a broad set of stakeholders rather than defying or stonewalling regulators.


pages: 306 words: 85,836

When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbus A320, airport security, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, feminist movement, food miles, George Akerlof, global pandemic, information asymmetry, invisible hand, loss aversion, mental accounting, Netflix Prize, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, Pareto efficiency, peak oil, pre–internet, price anchoring, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Richard Thaler, Sam Peltzman, security theater, sugar pill, Ted Kaczynski, the built environment, The Chicago School, the High Line, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, US Airways Flight 1549

Dianne Feinstein”: See “Senator Feinstein Urges Californians to Be Aware That Generic Drug Prices Vary Greatly From Pharmacy to Pharmacy,” May 8, 2006. / 53 “A comprehensive Wall Street Journal article”: Sarah Rubenstein, “Why Generic Doesn’t Always Mean Cheap,” The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2007. 57 “FOR $25 MILLION, NO WAY . . .”: “The virtues of offering big prizes to encourage . . . curing disease”: See Levitt, “Fight Global Pandemics (or at Least Find a Good Excuse When You’re Playing Hooky),” Freakonomics.com, May 18, 2007; “or improving Netflix’s algorithms”: See Levitt, “Netflix $ Million Prize,” Freakonomics.com, October 6, 2006. / 59 “As reported by ABC News”: See Matthew Cole, “U.S. Will Not Pay $25 Million Osama Bin Laden Reward, Officials Say,” ABCNews.com, May 19, 2011. 61 “CAN WE PLEASE GET RID OF THE PENNY ALREADY?”


pages: 442 words: 85,640

This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help by New Scientist, Helen Thomson

Abraham Wald, Black Lives Matter, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, Flynn Effect, George Floyd, global pandemic, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lock screen, lockdown, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, TED Talk, TikTok, ultra-processed food, Walter Mischel

Again, it’s based on the best recent scientific research that I and my New Scientist colleagues have unearthed. This time, the aim is to provide you with a comprehensive and evidence-based guide to a smarter, happier and less stressful life. When I agreed to write this book, I couldn’t know that I would end up writing most of it during a global pandemic lockdown. At the time of writing, the future still looks increasingly uncertain. There’s never been a better time to understand exactly how your brain works and how to use it to maximise the best aspects of your life, or help you cope when things go wrong. And there are life fixes that do work.


Know Thyself by Stephen M Fleming

Abraham Wald, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, backpropagation, citation needed, computer vision, confounding variable, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, global pandemic, higher-order functions, index card, Jeff Bezos, l'esprit de l'escalier, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, patient HM, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, recommendation engine, replication crisis, self-driving car, side project, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, traumatic brain injury

Throughout these moves, the ever-present support of our parents and friends has been central to keeping us emotionally, if not always physically, tied to home. Writing this book has been an acutely metacognitive experience—accompanied by self-doubt, self-questioning, and second-guessing of whether things are on the right or wrong track. The onset of a global pandemic in the closing stages only heightened this introspective anxiety, and I am very grateful to those at the other end of an email for prompt advice and words of encouragement. I am particularly indebted to Chris Frith and Nicholas Shea, who read the final draft and provided incisive and timely comments that helped minimize some of my more egregious errors and omissions.


pages: 291 words: 80,068

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Francis de Véricourt

Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, autonomous vehicles, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, circular economy, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, DeepMind, defund the police, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, fiat currency, framing effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, game design, George Floyd, George Gilder, global pandemic, global village, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Higgs boson, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microaggression, Mustafa Suleyman, Neil Armstrong, nudge unit, OpenAI, packet switching, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

The hex isn’t that the individual sees something that others do not. It is that others lack the cognitive dexterity to entertain many different models. It’s not that some can’t communicate; it’s that those around them don’t listen. Public-health experts warned for years about the threat of a global pandemic from coronaviruses that jump from animal to human, but few took note since the frame seemed so dramatic and alien. Both Eunice Foote in 1856 and Inez Fung in 1988 warned of carbon in the atmosphere leading to global warming, but the public wasn’t willing to accept it until later. To overcome the curse, institutions need to carve out a dedicated space to bring different frames to situations, and thereby expose people in organizations to diverse mental models.


pages: 282 words: 85,658

Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century by Jeff Lawson

Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, business process, call centre, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, create, read, update, delete, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DevOps, Elon Musk, financial independence, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, microservices, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, software as a service, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Telecommunications Act of 1996, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, transfer pricing, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, web application, Y Combinator

The coronavirus pandemic that struck in early 2020 forced the world to reconfigure itself in real time as cities shut down, children learned at home, companies sent workers home, hospitals were overwhelmed with patients, and more. Suddenly digital transformation projects slated to take place over several years were happening in days or weeks. It was the great digital acceleration, not by choice but by existential necessity driven by the largest global pandemic in a century. As economic activity slowed to a crawl, it was literally Build vs. Die for companies across many industries. The good news is, developers stepped up and delivered. In the course of a few weeks during March and April 2020 alone, many industries saw faster digital transformation than the entire previous decade.


pages: 337 words: 87,236

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, colonial rule, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Donald Trump, double helix, Easter island, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, Google Earth, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Suez crisis 1956, the map is not the territory, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois

Thanks, as always, to my terrific agent, Natasha Fairweather, and her assistant, Matthew Marland, at RCW. Many thanks to Jonathan Teplitzky, who put the germ of this idea into my head; to Paul Lay at History Today, who first commissioned me to write about statues; and to the London Library, whose excellent book delivery service made it possible to keep reading and researching even during a global pandemic and repeated lockdowns. Many scholars and friends were extremely generous in sharing their thoughts and ideas with me. Thanks to David Andress, Kabund Arqabound, Manuel Barcia, Sara Barker, Alice Bell, Jill Burke, Simukai Chigudu, William Dalrymple, Lauren (Robin) Derby, Jean-Pierre Dikaka, Vicky Donnellan, Madge Dresser, Sasha Dugdale, Beata Fricke, Ian Garner, Adom Getachew, Madeleine Gray, Hannah Greig, Chris Hill, Huma Imtiaz, Greg Jenner, Faiza S.


pages: 295 words: 81,861

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation by Paris Marx

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Californian Ideology, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, cashless society, clean tech, cloud computing, colonial exploitation, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, DARPA: Urban Challenge, David Graeber, deep learning, degrowth, deindustrialization, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, digital map, digital rights, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, energy transition, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, frictionless, future of work, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, George Gilder, gig economy, gigafactory, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, Greyball, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, independent contractor, Induced demand, intermodal, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jitney, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, market fundamentalism, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Murray Bookchin, new economy, oil shock, packet switching, Pacto Ecosocial del Sur, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, price mechanism, private spaceflight, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, safety bicycle, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, social distancing, Southern State Parkway, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stop de Kindermoord, streetcar suburb, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, transit-oriented development, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, VTOL, walkable city, We are as Gods, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, work culture , Yom Kippur War, young professional

As Horan explained, about 85 percent of the cost of an urban car service comes from drivers, vehicles, and fuel, and they are not costs that fall as a company grows, especially when Uber requires each driver to maintain their own vehicle instead of managing a vehicle fleet.24 The shocking thing about Uber is that, despite the narrative of the efficiency offered by its ride-matching algorithms, it actually provides a less efficient service than a traditional taxi company. That helps to explain how, after a decade, it is still losing money hand over fist. In 2020, Uber lost $6.77 billion on its global operations—that, however, is not an anomaly caused by the global pandemic; it was actually an improvement on its 2019 loss of $8.5 billion. In fact, given that Uber continues to lose money on most of its rides, the fewer it delivers, the better it may be for its financials. The persistence of these significant losses, even after going public, tells us something about the company’s business model and the potential motivation of those who keep stringing it along.


pages: 306 words: 82,909

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Automated Insights, banking crisis, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Brian Krebs, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computerized trading, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark pattern, deepfake, defense in depth, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake news, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, first-past-the-post, Flash crash, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, late capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, payday loans, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Skype, smart cities, SoftBank, supply chain finance, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, union organizing, web application, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, WikiLeaks, zero day

We need society’s rules and laws to be as patchable as your computers and phones. Unless we can hack the process of hacking itself, keeping its benefits and mitigating its costs and inequities, we may struggle to survive this technological future. Acknowledgments This book was born during a global pandemic and a personal life upheaval, and suffered from the effects of both. After writing 86,000 words in 2020, I largely ignored the manuscript in 2021—missing a deadline—and didn’t pick it up again until the spring of 2022. Then, with the help of Evelyn Duffy at Open Boat Editing, I trimmed 20,000 words and reorganized the book into the sixty-plus small chapters you’ve (hopefully) just read.


pages: 288 words: 86,995

Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything by Martin Ford

AI winter, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Big Tech, big-box store, call centre, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, factory automation, fake news, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Googley, GPT-3, high-speed rail, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, license plate recognition, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Ocado, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, post scarcity, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, SoftBank, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, Turing machine, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, very high income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

Within a month of its publication, Elon Musk was declaring that “with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon” and that AI “could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons.”29 A year later, Musk would co-found OpenAI and give it the specific mission of building “friendly” artificial intelligence. Among those most deeply influenced by Bostrom’s arguments, the idea that AI will someday pose an existential threat began to be perceived as a near certainly—and a danger ultimately far more terrifying and consequential than more mundane concerns like climate change or global pandemics. In a Ted Talk with more than five million views, the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris argues that “it’s very difficult to see how [the gains we make in artificial intelligence] won’t destroy us or inspire us to destroy ourselves” and suggests that “we need something like a Manhattan Project” focused on avoiding that outcome by figuring out how to build friendly, controllable AI.30 None of this will be a concern, of course, until we manage to build a true thinking machine with cognitive capability at least equivalent to our own.


pages: 321 words: 89,109

The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon! by Joseph N. Pelton

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Biosphere 2, Buckminster Fuller, business logic, Carrington event, Colonization of Mars, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, global pandemic, Google Earth, GPS: selective availability, gravity well, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, life extension, low earth orbit, Lyft, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megastructure, new economy, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Planet Labs, post-industrial society, private spaceflight, Ray Kurzweil, Scaled Composites, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tunguska event, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, X Prize

This is followed by concern and caution as to whether the world is ready to change so rapidly. With a world filled with tension and jihadist extremism and political leadership that sometimes has difficulty recognizing global challenges such as climate change, over generation of greenhouse gases, and the threat of global pandemics, it does at times seem doubtful that human are fit to colonize the world—let alone the universe. This is why we must look to innovation that produces more than neat new products. Rather, we need inventions that can usher in a sustainable world that can: (1) survive over the long term; (2) curb population growth ; (3) figure out the twenty first century human employment conundrum; and (4) create new economic systems that usher in a better and more productive future.


pages: 292 words: 92,588

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Anthropocene, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, climate change refugee, creative destruction, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, failed state, fixed income, Frank Gehry, global pandemic, Google Earth, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Large Hadron Collider, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, negative emissions, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, urban planning, urban renewal, wikimedia commons

During high tide, I waded knee-deep through dark ocean water in several Miami Beach neighborhoods; I saw high water backing up into working-class neighborhoods far to the west, near the border of the Everglades. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see that I was standing in a modern-day Atlantis-in-the-making. It became clear to me just how poorly our world is prepared to deal with the rising waters. Unlike, say, a global pandemic, sea-level rise is not a direct threat to human survival. Early humans had no problem adapting to rising seas—they just moved to higher ground. But in the modern world, that’s not so easy. There’s a terrible irony in the fact that it’s the very infrastructure of the Fossil Fuel Age—the housing and office developments on the coasts, the roads, the railroads, the tunnels, the airports—that makes us most vulnerable.


pages: 336 words: 93,672

The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists by Gary Marcus, Jeremy Freeman

23andMe, Albert Einstein, backpropagation, bioinformatics, bitcoin, brain emulation, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, Drosophila, epigenetics, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, Google Glasses, ITER tokamak, iterative process, language acquisition, linked data, mouse model, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, semantic web, speech recognition, stem cell, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, traumatic brain injury, Turing machine, twin studies, web application

In fact, we are personally becoming more and more enmeshed in systems whose emergent behavior can be very nontrivial and hard to predict, with sometimes far-reaching consequences for well-being and survival (think financial systems and climate change). Significant scientific efforts are underway to more accurately model how the dynamics of sociotechnological systems can impact economic stability, influence the spread of global pandemics, or trigger the onset of revolution or war. These efforts are fueled by an ever-increasing ability to record, store, and mine digital data on social and economic behavior. The advance of what is currently fashionably called “big data” appears unstoppable. Neuroscience, it turns out, is on the brink of its own “big data” revolution.


pages: 304 words: 88,773

The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Hidden Power of Urban Networks. by Steven Johnson

call centre, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Dean Kamen, digital map, double helix, edge city, Ford Model T, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Earth, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, John Nash: game theory, John Snow's cholera map, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, megacity, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, pattern recognition, peak oil, side project, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the scientific method, trade route, unbiased observer, working poor

This, in itself, was a telling phenomenon. Conventional flu vaccines are effective against only the type A and type B strains of influenza—the kind that sidelines you for a week with a fever and a stuffy head, but that is rarely fatal in anyone except the very young or the very old. The risk of a global pandemic emerging from these viruses is slim at best, which is why, historically, public-health officials in the West have not concerned themselves with the question of whether poultry workers on the other side of the world have received their flu shots. The virus that the public-health officials were worried about—H5N1, also known as the avian flu—is entirely unfazed by conventional flu shots.


pages: 326 words: 91,532

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything by Gottfried Leibbrandt, Natasha de Teran

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial exclusion, global pandemic, global reserve currency, illegal immigration, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Irish bank strikes, Julian Assange, large denomination, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine readable, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Network effects, Northern Rock, off grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, post-industrial society, printed gun, QR code, RAND corporation, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Rishi Sunak, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, tech billionaire, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, WikiLeaks, you are the product

Eggers) 177 Cirrus/Maestro 58 Citibank 56, 64, 133, 158, 220–1, 222, 248, 260 Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) 240 clearing systems 117–19, 122, 239–40 Clearpay 175 Clifford, Clark 264 Clinton, Hillary 267 closed vs open payment systems 220–6 cloud computing 270 ClubMed 170 ‘code as law’ 195–6 Collison, Patrick and John 163, 165 Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) 120–1 commodity money 8 Competition and Consumer Commission, Australian 224 Competition and Markets Authority, UK 180 competition authorities 223–4, 225–6 compound interest 90 ‘Confirmation of Payee’ systems 66 Connally, John 248 Consumer Reports 89 contactless payments 11, 173 conventions, payment 15, 17–19, 121–2, 215–16, 230 Corporate Transaction Banking 95 correspondent banking 138–42, 143, 144–5, 146–8, 223, 248, 267–8 Cotten, Gerald 200 counterfeiting and piracy 108, 112, 258 Covid-19 global pandemic 6, 8, 34, 37, 111, 134, 151, 159, 224, 245 credit cards business payments 95 cardboard 40, 41, 46–7, 108 debt 45, 100, 101 fraud 46, 51, 108–10 ‘honour all cards’ rule 56–7 interchange fees 42–4, 100 interest 90, 94, 173 introduction of 19, 39–44, 45–6, 70 online payments 50–1 overspending 173 paying to pay 101 real-time authorisation 47–8, 143–4 Union Pay, China 59 use in Europe 58, 101 see also Mastercard; Visa credit checks 175 credit default swaps 132 credit derivatives 131–3 Credit Suisse 65 Crelan bank 111 crime rates 33, 67 critical mass and payment systems 69–70, 79 cross-border payments 93, 133 card networks 143–4 clearing 240 correspondent banking 138–42, 143, 144–5, 146–8 debit cards 58–9 domestic instant payment systems 144 fees 137, 238–9 G20 agenda 148–9 global payments innovation (gpi) 147–8 Hawala system 142–3 interest made by banks 145–6 Letters of Credit 149–51 money remitters 144, 146 regulations 144, 145, 148, 239 TransferWise 146–7 Crossan, Doug 172 cryptocurrencies 16, 37, 63, 84, 187–209, 252, 269, 270 see also Central Bank Digital Currencies CryptoHQ 187 Cuba 149–50, 211 Cunliffe, John 11 currency controls 144 Currency Education Program (CEP), US 25 current account bank charges 91–2, 100–1 customer-loyalty programmes 219–20 CVV and CVV2 (Card Verification Value) codes 109, 171 cybercrime 107–8, 110–14, 232–3, 270 D Danske Bank 256–7 dark net 199 data privacy regulations 179, 233–4 dating-app fraud 111–12 de-risking 267–8 debit cards 19, 49, 50, 56–9, 91, 98 debts 8–10, 13–14, 45, 170, 173–4 Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) 196 Deliveroo 82–3 Deloitte 264 Denmark 172, 256, 257 derivatives market 131–3, 208 Deutsche Bank 64, 133, 166, 260 devaluation 203 DG Comp 224, 225–6 Diem/Libra 63 digital wallets 224 Dimon, Jamie 206 Diners Club 40 direct debits 67, 119 disgorgement 198 distributed computing platform 194–6 Dodd-Frank legislation 98 dollar bills, circulation overseas 24–5, 213 dollars, global power of US 246–54 domestic securities market, US 247 Dorsey, Jack 155 drugs economy 27, 255, 258, 263 Dubai First Royal Mastercard 52 Durbin Amendment 57, 98 Dutch Data Protection Authority 234 Dutch Golden Age 5 Dutch parliament 266 Dutch resistance 7–8 E EBA Clearing 239–40 eBanking 36, 181 eBay 19, 51, 52, 70, 161, 163, 165 The Economist 55, 184 email fraud 110–11 embassies, diplomatic 266–7 embedded payments 169 E.On 119 Epic Games 225 Eriksson, Björn 35 errors, payment 64–6 Escobar, Pablo 255 escrow account systems 52 Estonia, Danske Bank 256–7 Ethereum/Ether 194–6, 198–9 euro E500 bills 24, 25, 28 see also Europe; European Central Bank; European Commission; European Union; Eurozone Europaisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH) 248 Europay 59, 90–1 Europe bank fines and financial crime 259–60 bank revenue 98, 99, 100–1, 102–3, 237–9, 241, 242 credit card use 58, 101 current accounts 100–1 Eastern 78, 213 financial literacy 172 instant payment systems 86 own payment network 59–60 paying to pay 98, 100–1 protection of personal data 179 regulatory authorities 224, 225–6, 231, 232, 237–42, 244 use of debit cards 58–9 European Banking Authority 256 European Banking Federation 239 European Central Bank 34, 86, 205–6, 233, 237, 240–1, 271 European Commission 60, 83, 85–6, 224, 225, 237, 238, 239, 240, 271 European Payments Council (EPC) 240 European Payments Initiative 60, 271 European Union (EU) 79, 148, 180–1, 237, 238–9, 243, 244–5, 265–6 Eurozone 102–3, 119, 183, 240 eWallets 36, 52, 216, 217 executive-whaling 110–11 F FACC AG 111 Facebook 63, 70, 110, 147, 158, 165, 179, 184, 201–2, 204–6, 209, 220, 222, 224, 269 facilitators, payment 162 Fantástico 234 far-right groups 4 Faster Payments Service (FPS) 82, 83, 84, 86 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) 113 federal debt 9 Federal Reserve Bank 12, 36, 37, 113–14, 131, 232, 259 Fedwire 126–7 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 262 Financial Conduct Authority, UK 37–8 financial crime 255–64 see also counterfeiting; fraud; money laundering; robbery financial literacy 172 Financial Stability Board (FSB) 135, 268, 269 Financial Times 103, 128, 129, 166–7 FinCEN 253, 255 FinTech 38, 147, 151, 155–9, 162–7, 240 lack of regulation 156, 235–6 First American Bankshare 264 foreign ATM fees 90 foreign exchange 56, 89, 90, 93, 131, 133, 140, 144, 205, 208, 246 Foreign Funds Control (FFC), US 249 foreign reserves, dollars and 247 Fortnite 225 four-corner payment model 41–2, 174, 220 France 63, 67, 119, 243, 245, 259, 260 Frankfurt Stock Exchange 166 fraud bank 261–5 card payment 46, 51, 52, 108–9 dating-app 111 cryptocurrency 199–200 detection services 56, 162 emails 110–11 and frictionless payments 170, 171–2 social media 110 free-banking era, US 208 free speech 184 Freis, Jim 167 French foreign ministry 234 frictionless payments 170–5 Friedlein, Joe 127 G G20 148–9 geographic payment preferences 67–8, 72 George, Edward 126 Germany 28, 67, 78–9, 111, 123, 158, 166–7, 183, 243, 245, 247, 248–9 Giannini, A.


pages: 334 words: 91,722

Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (And Why They Were Never Going To) by Chris Grey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, game design, global pandemic, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, lockdown, non-tariff barriers, open borders, post-truth, reserve currency, Robert Mercer

So this was the situation on the eve of commencing the future terms negotiations in March 2020. But just as they were about to begin, something entirely unexpected and unprecedented was emerging which was to push Brexit from the headlines and to colour the entire negotiating proceedings: the global pandemic of a new and deadly virus. THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC AND BREXIT There is no doubt a book to be written just on the way that the coronavirus – or Covid-19 – pandemic and Brexit intersected. For one thing, it meant that the future terms negotiations often took place by video conference, rather than face to face, which may have inflected them differently.


pages: 319 words: 89,192

Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier

Airbnb, business intelligence, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, false flag, forensic accounting, global pandemic, Global Witness, index card, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Londongrad, medical malpractice, NSO Group, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, WikiLeaks

Acknowledgments Writing is a solitary pursuit. Turning an idea into a published book is anything but solitary. It happens because a large number of people generously share their talents and time. This was particularly true for books like this one which took shape amid the hardships and horrors of a global pandemic. My agent, Farley Chase, worked from the start to help shape the proposal for this book and found a wonderful editor in Jonathan Jao at HarperCollins. From there, Jonathan’s good humor and enthusiasm for this project took over and propelled it forward. Farley’s co-agent in London, Caspian Dennis, connected with Juliet Brooke of Sceptre Books, who was eager to bring out a UK edition of Spooked.


How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal From Your Past, and Create Your Self by Nicole Lepera

autism spectrum disorder, BIPOC, delayed gratification, epigenetics, fear of failure, global pandemic, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sugar pill, twin studies

At the same time this personal turmoil was occurring, the Holistic Psychology message was spreading like wildfire around the world with more than two million people following my posts on social media and engaging with the work on levels that my mind just could not grasp. I felt elated—vindicated, really—and also overwhelmed. My inner child, so desperate to be seen and loved, began to quake under the pressure of so many eyes. I feared being misunderstood, and when I inevitably was misunderstood, I felt like a failure. Then a global pandemic hit, and everything was thrown into stark relief. There was so much pain, suffering, and trauma. We were all in it together, locked up, energetically and physically struggling in a new world that made no sense. Stress raged. Like so many, I felt deeply uncommitted to my journey for the first time in years.


pages: 311 words: 90,172

Nothing But Net by Mark Mahaney

Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Black Swan, Burning Man, buy and hold, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial engineering, gamification, gig economy, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), knowledge economy, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, medical malpractice, meme stock, Network effects, PageRank, pets.com, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, subscription business, super pumped, the rule of 72, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a discounting mechanism on steroids. In February and March of 2020, the market crashed 34% in just 23 trading days. It then gapped back up 52% to recover to that February high in 103 trading days. The recovery time was longer than the crash time, but three months is still a very short time given a global pandemic and recession. What happened? The market aggressively anticipated and discounted the crisis and then the recovery. The WFH/LFH basket of stocks contained some great outperformers in 2020, but the most dramatic part of the outperformance for most of the stocks occurred in a tight three-to-six-month period.


pages: 420 words: 94,064

The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors by Spencer Jakab

4chan, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, buy and hold, classic study, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, democratizing finance, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, fake news, family office, financial innovation, gamification, global macro, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, John Bogle, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, meme stock, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, passive investing, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Vision Fund, WeWork, zero-sum game

Brokers like Robinhood and E*Trade and wholesalers such as Citadel and Virtu were like taxis, hotels, and restaurants that were loving the rush of drunk tourists leaving fat tips. The role of “the House,” which involves outsize risk and reward, was played by the part of the business that embraces “good volatility.” A glance at the results put up by the two largest investment banks amid a sharp recession and a global pandemic tells the story: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley made nearly $23 billion in combined revenue in their markets divisions for the first six months of 2020 alone, which was 54 percent more than a very healthy first half of 2019. The hedge fund manager William Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdings made a multibillion-dollar bet on the plunge and had its best year ever, gaining 70 percent.[8] Melvin Capital Management’s Gabe Plotkin, who would later become the main victim of the GameStop Revolution, practically printed money in 2020, personally taking home $846 million in compensation.


pages: 302 words: 92,206

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

3D printing, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, charter city, circular economy, clean water, colonial exploitation, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, European colonialism, failed state, gentrification, global pandemic, Global Witness, green new deal, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, housing crisis, ice-free Arctic, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, job automation, joint-stock company, Kim Stanley Robinson, labour mobility, load shedding, lockdown, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, megacity, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, old age dependency ratio, open borders, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, place-making, planetary scale, plyscraper, polynesian navigation, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, white flight, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game, Zipcar

The coming upheaval gives us an opportunity to disrupt this inequity by recognizing and protecting the rights of all migrants as global citizens. It’s a chance to acknowledge that we have more in common than we have differences. And if this seems unrealistic or impossible, consider the enormous social change that we all willingly undertook, and achieved, in a matter of weeks during the 2020 global pandemic. Much of that cooperation occurred in the absence of conflict or authoritarian leadership. Consider, also, the cooperation that nations undertook to develop drugs and vaccines, to share scientific data and health interventions. Consider that populations everywhere, along with big corporations such as Astra-Zeneca, and NGOs such as the Gates Foundation, insisted that any vaccine be also made available to the poorest of our global society and not be sequestered or locked away behind patents by any one company or rich state.


The Despot's Accomplice: How the West Is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy by Brian Klaas

Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, citizen journalism, clean water, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, failed state, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, moral hazard, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Seymour Hersh, Skype, Steve Jobs, trade route, Transnistria, Twitter Arab Spring, unemployed young men, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Democracy, by its very nature, would have allowed the Turkmen people the opportunity to replace their dictator (and perhaps openly lip-sync a farewell song while doing so). â•… But sometimes, authoritarianism shines beyond the glimmering statues. In May 2003, the SARS outbreak in China threatened to spread into a global pandemic. The crisis was largely averted because authoritarianism allowed China to act without consulting society or abiding by “pesky” labor laws. The government built a 1,000-bed hospital facility dedicated to SARS patients in eight days.12 They broke ground on a 25 THE DESPOT’S ACCOMPLICE Tuesday and patients were ready to move in by the following Wednesday. 7,000 people worked day and night until it was done.


pages: 347 words: 97,721

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines by Thomas H. Davenport, Julia Kirby

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Amazon Robotics, Andy Kessler, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, carbon-based life, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, commoditize, conceptual framework, content marketing, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, deliberate practice, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, estate planning, financial engineering, fixed income, flying shuttle, follow your passion, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Freestyle chess, game design, general-purpose programming language, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Hans Lippershey, haute cuisine, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, industrial robot, information retrieval, intermodal, Internet of things, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter Thiel, precariat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, robo advisor, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, speech recognition, spinning jenny, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, tech worker, TED Talk, the long tail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Works Progress Administration, Zipcar

Bryson points out, “We already have calculators that can do math better than us, and they don’t even take over the pockets they live in, let alone the world.”1 As we’ve described earlier, there are passionate prophesiers of “superintelligence” like Nick Bostrom of Oxford. Bostrom’s colleague Stuart Armstrong published a report calling for a whole new category of risks to be recognized: risks of potentially infinite impact. Among a number of global challenges “threatening the very basis of our civilization” (including nuclear war, climate change, and global pandemics) they included artificial intelligence, because of what is known as “the control problem.”2 Once machines can outthink humans, their ability to decide and make things happen might be beyond our power to rein in. Bostrom and Armstrong paint apocalyptic scenarios, but you don’t have to buy into a future of robot overlords to believe we need society-level decision-making in the face of advancing AI.


pages: 281 words: 95,852

The Googlization of Everything: by Siva Vaidhyanathan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, AltaVista, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, borderless world, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, data acquisition, death of newspapers, digital divide, digital rights, don't be evil, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full text search, global pandemic, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, libertarian paternalism, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pirate software, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, single-payer health, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thorstein Veblen, Tyler Cowen, urban decay, web application, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

The rules of the road were worked out rather quickly and almost entirely in favor of the automobile: more people became motorists, and fewer were pedestrians. Soon after World War II, flying and driving became elements of daily life for most of the developed world. Yet the externalities of both these transport systems—from global climate change to global terrorism to global pandemics—have left us wondering how we made so many bad decisions about both of them. We did not acknowledge all the hazards created by our rush to move and connect goods and people, and so we did not plan. We did not limit. We did not deliberate. We did not deploy wisdom and caution in the face of the new and powerful.


pages: 296 words: 98,018

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist lawyer, affirmative action, Airbnb, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Heinemeier Hansson, deindustrialization, disintermediation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, food desert, friendly fire, gentrification, global pandemic, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, new economy, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit maximization, public intellectual, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, tech baron, TechCrunch disrupt, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the High Line, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Two Sigma, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, Virgin Galactic, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

“There’s a general understanding of how the world works that lies behind those kinds of initiatives, which I think is false,” he said. “And that understanding is that what the world suffers from is a lack of true international cooperation.” This understanding is right on some issues, such as global pandemics and climate change, he said. “But in most other areas, when you think about them, whether it’s international finance, whether it’s economic development, whether it’s business and financial stability, whether it’s international trade—the problem, it seems to me, is not that we don’t have sufficient global governance, that we don’t have sufficient global cooperation, that we’re not getting together enough.


Beautiful Visualization by Julie Steele

barriers to entry, correlation does not imply causation, data acquisition, data science, database schema, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, global pandemic, Hans Rosling, index card, information retrieval, iterative process, linked data, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, no-fly zone, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, performance metric, power law, QR code, recommendation engine, semantic web, social bookmarking, social distancing, social graph, sorting algorithm, Steve Jobs, the long tail, web application, wikimedia commons, Yochai Benkler

Autopsy protocols and photographs used as evidence in criminal cases can be difficult for jurors to understand. VA visualizations are typically clearer (Figures 18-4 and 18-9). Storage of VA data poses few problems, whereas autopsy records such as tissue sections are difficult to store indefinitely (Figure 18-16). With potential global pandemics such as bird flu (avian influenza A) and swine flu (the H1N1 virus) posing an increasing threat, the practice of eviscerating the victims can pose serious health risks to coroners, pathologists, and medical examiners. With a VA, these risks are minimized. However, virtual autopsies also have several shortcomings: For MDCT, soft tissue discrimination is low.


pages: 324 words: 96,491

Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News by Clint Watts

4chan, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Climatic Research Unit, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, false flag, Filter Bubble, global pandemic, Google Earth, Hacker News, illegal immigration, information security, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, Julian Assange, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, mutually assured destruction, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, operational security, pre–internet, Russian election interference, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Bannon, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Turing test, University of East Anglia, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

Fear, more than any other emotion, lowers people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction, making lies easier to sell. Audiences were reminded, relentlessly, of impending calamities that could bring the end of humankind. Nuclear standoffs with the West were amplified by Kremlin outlets at home and abroad. Global pandemics poised to destroy local communities offered a particularly effective line of attack on America, and this area of effort, more than any other, represents what may have been the greatest success of active measures to date. The AIDS virus ravaged communities around the world, growing from a handful of cases in 1980 to more than 4.5 million in 1995.2 The United States led much of the world’s effort to counter the spread of HIV across impoverished regions.


pages: 372 words: 100,947

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, hockey-stick growth, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, offshore financial centre, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WikiLeaks

Tom Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Joe DeRisi, co-president of the Biohub funded by CZI, reported that the Chinese government and Trump were downplaying the risk and that the virus had spread to half a dozen countries. Facebook had the potential to play a critical role in what appeared to be the first global pandemic of the internet age. On January 26, Zuckerberg ordered his department heads to drop all nonessential work to prepare.1 The civic engagement team, which had been developing a number of new features ahead of the presidential election, including a centralized hub for sharing voting information, shifted its efforts to create a center for information from the CDC and the World Health Organization.


pages: 329 words: 100,162

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, cashless society, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, financial thriller, forensic accounting, gig economy, global pandemic, growth hacking, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Kevin Roose, lock screen, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Mason jar, Menlo Park, Multics, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, post-truth, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Russell Brand, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, tech bro, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork

It’s something I thought about again on March 13, 2020 as fears over the Coronavirus peaked. The virus had spread around the world, wreaking particular havoc in China and Italy, and after a month of stalling, New York City was itself just two days away from shutting down all its schools, bars, and restaurants. But just off the Bowery in SoHo, in the face of a global pandemic, dozens of people had crammed together, collectively risking their lives for something even more viral than COVID-19: a Supreme drop. As it was, the news of the virus made it a great day to score the elusive skateboarding gear. Justin Marchesani and Roland Carlor, two New York City fans of the brand who I caught leaving the store, said that for an 11 a.m. drop on a Thursday, the line was short and fast-moving.


pages: 309 words: 97,320

Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System by Natalie Starkey

active measures, carbon-based life, COVID-19, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, global pandemic, Kickstarter, Kuiper Belt, Late Heavy Bombardment, lockdown, planetary scale, Pluto: dwarf planet, supervolcano

Yet this book has kept me company, moving countries with me and my family from California, USA, to the UK, and putting up with three house moves. It got put on the back burner for a year while I flew off to write a planetarium space show in New York, but was there waiting for me when I returned. It has even dealt with a global pandemic. Nevertheless, this book eventually got written and the breaks from writing I’ve had to take over the two and a half years working on it helped to give me some perspective. I absolutely love the process of writing, shutting myself away in the office for hours on end to research and write about these fascinating Solar System worlds.


Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, blue-collar work, call centre, centre right, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, fake news, forensic accounting, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pez dispenser, QAnon, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, tech billionaire, TED Talk, The Day the Music Died, the long tail, TikTok, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

When I ran for president actually proposing universal basic income, I was dismissed as a fringe, unserious candidate by many until my campaign was embraced by hundreds of thousands of Americans, we raised $40 million, and we outcompeted half a dozen political brand names on the way to contention. I learned a lot. I used to think that the problem was that Americans did not know about universal basic income. Today, in large part thanks to a coronavirus-induced recession and a global pandemic, 55 percent of Americans support universal basic income, and more than 80 percent of Americans support cash relief during the pandemic. Still, despite building a popular consensus, our halting relief efforts centered on plowing money into various institutional pipes and bailing out big companies.


pages: 371 words: 109,320

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World by Alan Rusbridger

airport security, basic income, Bellingcat, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, crisis actor, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Google Earth, green new deal, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Narrative Science, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, post-truth, profit motive, public intellectual, publication bias, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech baron, the scientific method, TikTok, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism

During the Covid-19 pandemic Trump frequently referenced the ‘foreign virus’ and ‘China virus’, which CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta said ‘smacked of xenophobia’. The justice correspondent for the Nation, Elie Mystal, pointed to the connection between Trump’s rhetoric and a rise in hate crimes against Asians, writing, ‘If the media were doing their job, this would be the story: The president of the United States is putting lives at risk during a global pandemic by inciting violence against fellow Americans.’ Before Trump, though, xenophobic language, especially against Muslims, was prevalent in cable news. The British journalist Mehdi Hasan said, ‘In many ways anti-Muslim hysteria is worse in the United States’, particularly because of birther conspiracy theories against Barack Obama.


pages: 344 words: 104,522

Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-bias training, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, clean tech, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, critical race theory, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, defund the police, deplatforming, desegregation, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fudge factor, full employment, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, green new deal, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, impact investing, independent contractor, index fund, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Network effects, Parler "social media", plant based meat, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, random walk, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Bork, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, single source of truth, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, Susan Wojcicki, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Virgin Galactic, WeWork, zero-sum game

If Zenz is right, the Chinese government is committing cultural genocide against the Uighurs in a very literal sense—instead of killing them or controlling them, it’s decided it’s easier to prevent more from being born. While the Uighurs suffer the worst of China’s atrocities, they are far from alone. The Chinese Communist Party has taken advantage of the free rein given to it by the global pandemic to extend its brutal hand outward. Its soldiers attacked Indian ones on the supposedly demilitarized border in Ladakh, killing dozens in hand-to-hand fighting and executing the wounded by pushing them over a cliff.14 China’s also rapidly building amphibious assault ships and aiming them squarely at Taiwan.15 It takes the US years to build one of these powerful, expensive assault carriers, loaded with helicopters and marines.


pages: 375 words: 105,586

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth by Chris Smaje

agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, collaborative consumption, Corn Laws, COVID-19, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, energy transition, European colonialism, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial independence, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, future of work, Gail Bradbrook, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, hive mind, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jevons paradox, land reform, mass immigration, megacity, middle-income trap, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, post-industrial society, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, Rutger Bregman, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019 The downward kink seen in Figure 1.1 around 2008 reflects the financial crisis of that year and its chilling effect on the global economy manifested in energy use. But, as you can see from later years, this turned out to be a short-run downturn in the longer upward trend. As this book is going to press, the global pandemic caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 virus seems certain to cause another and probably larger downward spike. Collapsing demand for fossil fuels arising from the pandemic has caused an economic crisis in the oil and gas industry that’s prompted some analysts to question whether it can survive. But what’s clear from Figure 1.1 is that the modern global economy is utterly dependent on fossil fuels, whatever short-run price fluctuations the sector experiences in crisis conditions.


Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World by Matt Alt

4chan, Apollo 11, augmented reality, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, game design, glass ceiling, global pandemic, haute cuisine, hive mind, late capitalism, lateral thinking, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, period drama, Ponzi scheme, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, three-martini lunch, union organizing, work culture , zero-sum game

A surge in demand at streaming services such as Netflix and PlayStation Network forced the companies to throttle back server speeds as the sheer volume of entertainment data began to overwhelm European telecom networks. And then there is the curious case of the Nintendo Switch title Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It was released on March 20, seemingly terrible timing amid a global pandemic. It sold 11.77 million copies in just twelve days. In this customizable simulation of outdoor life, populated by bobbleheaded kawaii animal characters, millions escaped the tedium of societal lockdowns by taking online trips to virtual islands built by their friends. I don’t think the future will be made in Japan.


Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland

agricultural Revolution, Alexander Shulgin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Burning Man, classic study, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Drosophila, experimental economics, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, hive mind, invention of agriculture, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, lateral thinking, lockdown, lone genius, meta-analysis, microdosing, Picturephone, placebo effect, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, search costs, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Zenefits

It is also worth noting that the few countries that used Covid-19 as an excuse to attempt prohibition, like Sri Lanka, ended up spawning enormous underground networks of home brewers, cooking up barely palatable—but definitely intoxicating—concoctions out of everything from beets to pineapples.11 People want to drink, and even a global pandemic will not stop them from doing so. Understanding why is profoundly important. This question cannot be coherently asked or answered without understanding the function that alcohol has played in human civilizations. As we have seen, besides its immediate hedonic value, the cognitive and behavioral effects of alcohol intoxication represent, from a cultural evolutionary perspective, a robust and elegant response to the challenges of getting a selfish, suspicious, narrowly goal-oriented primate to loosen up and connect with strangers.


pages: 400 words: 108,843

Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", active measures, activist lawyer, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, collective bargaining, cotton gin, COVID-19, desegregation, Donald Trump, global pandemic, greed is good, income inequality, invisible hand, obamacare, plutocrats, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, W. E. B. Du Bois

Wyn Kelley and Dale Peterson have been beloved family long before it was official. My sons give me joy beyond measure. Danny, I am so proud of you and the mature, thoughtful, and kind person you have always been and always will be. Your poise, intelligence and humor helped us all get through the challenge of writing a book during a global pandemic in ways you may never know (“keep calm and write on”), but which your mom and I will never forget. Felix, hearing your irrepressibly cheery little voice every morning as I toiled in the basement—and your footsteps above as you ran around upstairs in your Batman costume—kept me smiling. Most of all, it is hard to know what to say about someone who has been a part of you for more than half your life, but here goes.


pages: 338 words: 104,815

Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It by Daniel Simons, Christopher Chabris

Abraham Wald, Airbnb, artificial general intelligence, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", blockchain, Boston Dynamics, butterfly effect, call centre, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, ChatGPT, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, financial thriller, forensic accounting, framing effect, George Akerlof, global pandemic, index fund, information asymmetry, information security, Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Jim Simons, John von Neumann, Keith Raniere, Kenneth Rogoff, London Whale, lone genius, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, multilevel marketing, Nelson Mandela, pattern recognition, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, power law, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Bankman-Fried, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart transportation, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systematic bias, TED Talk, transcontinental railway, WikiLeaks, Y2K

But such graphics can also backfire. People who opposed the idea of requiring better masks—or any masks at all—could point to the silly numbers to undermine the credibility of an otherwise well-supported position. The virtuous end of persuading more people to use higher-quality masks to slow a global pandemic does not justify using erroneous means to reach it.11 EXPECTATION-BASED REASONING It’s common for business leaders to profess their faith in numbers with bromides like “We are a data-driven organization” or “Numbers don’t lie.” Paying attention to data is better than ignoring them, but we should remember that our preconceptions color our interpretations.


pages: 357 words: 107,984

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster by Nick Timiraos

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, break the buck, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, fear index, financial innovation, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, moral hazard, non-fungible token, oil shock, Phillips curve, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Rishi Sunak, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Skype, social distancing, subprime mortgage crisis, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, unorthodox policies, Y2K, yield curve

Locking down Before the afternoon Cabinet Room meeting with the banking executives, Mnuchin found himself on the losing side of a debate in front of the president in the Oval Office over whether to halt European travel to the United States. Earlier that day, the World Health Organization had declared a global pandemic. Deborah Birx—an Army doctor and former US global AIDS coordinator who had recently been tapped as the coronavirus task-force coordinator—argued that every case stopped from entering the US would prevent new clusters of hundreds of cases. Mnuchin argued strenuously against such a ban. “This will create a depression,” he warned.


pages: 383 words: 105,387

The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World by Tim Marshall

Apollo 11, Ayatollah Khomeini, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Sedaris, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, failed state, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, low earth orbit, Malacca Straits, means of production, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Urbanism, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Strategic Defense Initiative, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, uranium enrichment, urban planning, women in the workforce

., ‘The Security of the European Union’s Critical Outer Space Infrastructures’ (thesis), Keele University (2015) https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43759498.pdf ‘Space Fence: How to Keep Space Safe’, Lockheed Martin https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/space-fence.html ‘The Artemis Accords: Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes’, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/926741/Artemis_Accords_signed_13Oct2020__002_.pdf INDEX A Abdoulahi, Alpha 213 Abdullah, Prince Miteb bin 96–7 Abdullah, Turki ibn 80 Abe, Shinzo 32–3 Aboriginal Australians 6–7, 10, 11–14 Achaemenid Persian Empire 45 Acropolis, Athens 146 Acts of Union (1707) 109, 117–18, 133 Aegean Sea 142, 143, 148, 159, 160, 172, 189 Afghanistan 48, 62, 64, 68, 87, 89, 151, 222 Africa xiv–xv, 28, 29, 121, 131, 173, 231 see also Ethiopia; Sahel, the; individual countries by name African Development Bank 219 African Union 225, 250 Afwerki, Isaias 253 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 54, 55–6 Ahmed, Abiy 253 Ahmed, Munir 256 Aksum Empire 247 al-Hariri, Saad 93–4 Al Jazeera TV 92 Al-Mourabitoun 215 Al-Oraibi, Mina 102 Al-Otaybi, Juhayman 86 Al-Qaeda xv, 88–90, 204, 212, 213, 214 Al-Rasheed, Professor Madawi 82 Al-Shabab 242, 244 Alabaster, Rear Admiral Martin 135 Albania 143, 154 Alexander II, Pope 274 Alexander the Great 40, 46, 144, 148, 174 Alexander VI, Pope 277 Algeria 209, 212, 218–19 Allied forces 23–4, 83, 123, 152 Anangu people 13 Anatolia 172, 173, 174, 175, 191–3, 197 Andalusian Umayyad dynasty 274 Anders, William 305 Ángel Blanco, Miguel 291 Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP) 48 Anglo-Saxons 110, 114 Ansar Dine 212 anti-Semitism 52, 59–60, 153, 186, 276 Apollo space missions 303, 305–6 Arab-Israeli War (1967) 85 Arab League 85 Arab Uprisings (2011) 91, 185–6 Arabs, Iranian 42, 64 Areva 227, 228 Argus newspaper, Melbourne 12 Aristotle 147 Ark of the Covenant 246 Arlit, Niger 227–8 Armenia 42, 185, 191 Armenian genocide 164, 180, 188 arms deals 86, 91, 102, 164, 191, 198, 262 Armstrong, Neil 304, 305 Artemis Accords 302–3, 309 Ashura festival 47 Assad, Bashar al xii, 58, 61, 91–2, 187–8, 196 asateroid 3554 Amun 324 astropolitical theory 311–14 Atatürk Dam 192 Atatürk, General Kemal 152–3, 179–80, 196, 199 Auld Alliance 117, 118 Auschwitz concentration camp 154 Australia xvi Aboriginals 6–7, 10, 11–13 armed forces 5, 18, 22, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32 blockade repercussions 21–2, 31 Botany Bay 10–11 British settlement 4–5 climate change 19–20 climate 6 defence 21, 22–5, 27 first recorded landing 9–10 fossil fuels 19, 20, 31 Frontier Wars 11–12 geography of 4, 5–6, 14 gold rush 14 growth of colonies 15 independence 15 influence in South Pacific 27–8 intelligence network 30–1, 129 migrants and refugees 16–19 multicultural population 17–18 Murray-Darling River Basin 8–9 Outback 6–7, 14 penal colony 4–5, 10–11 politics 5, 15, 16, 18–19, 23, 28 population distribution 6–7 population size 8, 14, 15–16, 19 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue 32 relationship with China 25–6, 27–30, 31, 33 relationship with Japan 31, 32 relationship with United Kingdom 22, 23 relationship with USA 23, 24–5, 30–1, 33 rivers 8–9, 15, 20 Second World War 23–4 trade 5, 9, 11, 15, 19, 21, 26, 29–30, 31 transport system 15 water scarcity 20 wildfires 19 wildlife 6 Ayers Rock/Uluru 13 Azawad state 212, 219 Azerbaijan 42, 191 Azeris, Iranian 41 B Baghdad xiv, 58 Baha’i faith 52 Bahrain 69, 76, 77, 80, 91, 102 Balearic Islands 270 Balkans 145, 149, 151–2, 154, 175, 186 Baltic States 131 Baluchistan province, Iran 64 Bambara people 211 Bandler, Faith 13 Banks, Sir Joseph 10 Basij militia 55, 65, 66, 67 Basque Country 269, 279, 284, 289–91 Basque Nationalist Party 291 Battle of Britain (1940) 123 Battle of Gallipoli (1915–16) 178 Battle of Karbala (680) 47 Battle of Manzikert (1071) 158 Battle of Marathon (490 BCE) 45 Battle of the Coral Sea (1942) 25 Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE) 146 Battle of Tours (732) 273–4 Battle of Trafalgar (1805) 280 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 89–90, 133 Persian Service 51 Belmokhtar, Mokhtar 215 Bezos, Jeff 308 Biden, Joe 25, 69, 103, 164, 199 Bin Laden, Osama 75, 87, 88, 89, 104 Black Sea 143, 165, 166, 182, 189, 190 Blue Homeland concept 189–90 Blue Mountains, Australia 14 Blue Nile 242, 244, 260 Blue Origin 308 Boko Haram 216–17, 221 Bolívar, Simón 281 Bosnia 185 Boudicca, Queen 113 BP (British Petroleum) 48 Brexit xv, 108, 127, 136 British Empire 118–22, 123–4, 148, 150–1, 161, 210, 308 see also United Kingdom Bulgaria 143, 151–2, 153, 178 Burkina Faso 211, 215, 216, 222, 224, 226, 228–9, 231 Bush, George W. 39, 57, 60 Byzantine Empire 46, 148–9, 150, 152, 158, 172, 173–5, 196 Byzantium 148–9 C Caesar, Julius 112 Calvo Sotelo, José 282 camels 206–7 Cameron, David 130 Canada 30, 129, 130 Canary Islands 270–1, 297 Carter, Jimmy 61 Castillo, José 282 Castro Veiga, José 285 Catalonia xv, 269, 270, 279–80, 282, 284, 287, 289, 291–6 Catholic Church 53, 116, 275–6, 281 Celtic Britain 112–13 Chad 216–17, 222, 225, 226, 230 Chanoine, Julien 209–10 Charlemagne, Emperor 274 Charles I, King 116 China x, xii, xv African Belt and Road Initiative 231 ‘area of denial’ 27 armed forces 25, 26–7, 29, 30, 231 control of the West Pacific/South China Sea 24–5, 26, 31–2 Djibouti naval base 231, 258 militarization of space 314, 315, 317–18 potential interest in Catalonia 293–4 presence in the Sahel 231 rare-earth supplies 230–1 relationship with Australia 26, 27–30, 31 relationship with Ethiopia 259, 262 relationship with Iran 64 relationship with Saudi Arabia 96, 102 relationship with Serbia 293–4 relationship with South Pacific 27–9 relationship with UK 128, 130, 134 space exploration 302–3, 309, 314 Chinese People’s Liberation Army 26–7, 30, 231 Christianity 47, 52, 116, 247, 248, 256, 273, 274 see also Catholic Church Church of England 47, 116 Church of our Lady Mary of Zion 246 Churchill, Winston 48 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 30–1, 49 Clarke, Arthur C. 325 Claudius, Emperor 112 climate change 19–20, 204, 211, 224, 306 coal industry 20 Cold War 25, 31, 49, 124, 128, 161, 181–2, 248, 250, 252, 285–6, 319 Columbus, Christopher 276–7 Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) 310 Common Security and Defence Policy 131 Commonwealth 132 Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900) 15 communism x, 49–50, 67, 153, 154, 286 Confluence of the Two Seas, The (Dara Shikoh) 33 Cook, Captain James 9, 119 Cook Islands 29 Coral Sea Cable System 28 Corfu 143, 148, 150, 159, 160 Coulport Naval Base 134–5 Council of Guardians, Iranian 54, 56–7 Covid-19 global pandemic 28, 29, 30, 63, 99, 133, 293–4 Crassus, General 46 Crete 143, 159, 160 Crimea 190 Cromwell, Oliver 116 Cuban forces 251, 252 Cumbers, Simon 89–90 Curtin, John 23 cyberattacks 29, 30, 67 Cyprus 143, 160–2, 163, 164, 165, 198 Cyrus II 45 Czech government 218 D Daily Mail 133 Dalai Lama 130 Danakil Depression 242 Darius I 45 Daru Island 25 Darug people 11 Darwin naval base, Australia 24 Dasht-e Kavir 38 Dasht-e Lut 38 Davutoğlu, Professor Ahmet 184 de Gaulle, Charles 125 deGrasse Tyson, Neil 322–3 Denmark 126, 131, 218 Derg (Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police and Territorial Army) 250–1, 252 Djibouti 231, 242–3, 248, 257–8 Dolman, Professor Everett 311–12 Drake, Francis 278 Drake, Frank 323 Duyfken 10 E Earth Space/low Earth orbit 312–14 ‘Earthrise’ photograph 305 East African Rift system 241 East India Company 308 East Mediterranean Gas Forum 163 Economist 133 Egypt xii, xiv, 45, 85, 92, 94, 103, 143, 162, 163, 186, 198, 248, 258, 259, 260–3 Egyptian-Ethiopian War (1874-76) 248, 261 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 286 Elburz Mountains 40, 42, 43 Elizabeth I, Queen 116 Empty Quarter (Rub’ al-Khali), Saudi Arabia 76 Endeavour, HMS 10, 119 English Civil War (1642–1651) 116 Eora people 11 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 92, 158–9, 183–9, 191, 194, 195–7, 198–9, 258 Eritrea 210, 242, 249, 250, 251–2, 253, 259 Estonia 218 ETA (Euzkadi ta Askatasuna) 290–1 Ethiopia xiv, 210 Abiy Ahmed 253–4 Aksum Empire 247 athletics 255 Christianity 247, 248, 256 conflict with Eritrea 250, 251–2, 253 earliest hominids 240 East African Rift system 241 emergence of the country 246–8 Emperor Haile Selassie I 246, 248–51 Emperor Tewodros II 248 ‘Ethiopiawinet’ policy 255 famine (1980s) 225, 251 folklore and religion 246 geography 241–2 Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam 244, 259–63 hydroelectric power 244, 259–61, 263 internal tensions 244, 245–6, 250, 251–2, 253–7 Islam 247–8, 256 languages 245–6, 250 Major Mengistu and Derg 250–1, 252 Makeda/Queen of Sheba 246 Meles Zenawi 252 military coup (1974) 250–1 military forces 242, 247, 248, 249, 251–2, 262 murder of Hachalu Hundessa 255–6 population size 242 relationship with China 259 relationship with Egypt 248, 259, 260–2 relationship with Italy 248, 249 relationship with Saudi Arabia and UAE 259, 262 relationship with Soviet Union 251, 252 relationship with USA 249, 251 sea access 249, 257 trade 241, 257–8 water supplies 240–1, 244, 260–3 Euphrates River 192 Europe xii, xv, 61, 64, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128, 150, 152, 173 migrants and refugees 144, 156–8, 204, 217–18, 220, 234 see also European Union (EU); United Kingdom; individual countries by name European Economic Community (EEC) 125 European Free Trade Association 294–5 European Union (EU) x, xii, xv, 60, 126–7, 130, 131–2, 136, 144, 145, 162, 164, 183, 188, 219, 225, 270, 289, 293–4, 297 euros, introduction of 126, 156 Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) 143, 162–3, 164 extraterrestrial life forms 322–3 F Fahd of Saudi Arabia 87–8 Faisal I of Saudi Arabia 84–5 Faslane Naval Base 134–5 Fatah 185 fatwas 52, 84, 86, 88 Fédération Aéronautique Internationale 310 Feith, David 231 Ferdinand of Aragon 275 Fiji 28, 29 financial crash (2008) 127 Financial Times 291 Finland 131 First Balkan War 151, 178 First World War 23, 48, 108, 122, 152, 178–9, 180, 281 5G network 29, 102 Five Eyes intelligence network 30, 129, 135 Food and Agricultural Organization, UN 225 Fortson, Danny 227 fossil fuels 19, 20, 43, 75, 98 see also oil and gas supplies Fraga, Manuel 288 France 94, 119 Auld Alliance 117 La Guerra dels Segadors 279 Napoleonic wars 119–20 Normans and Plantagenets 114–15 relationship with Saudi Arabia 86 relationship with Spain 279–80 relationship with the UK 125, 130–1, 133 relationship with Turkey 164, 198 Sahel, the 209–10, 214–20, 227–8, 232–3, 234, 235 Franco, Francisco 282–7 Free Syrian Army 91 Frontier Wars, Australia 11–12 Fulani 205, 221–2, 223–4 G G5 Sahel 216, 219, 221 G7 132 G20 summits 95 Gaddafi, Muammar xii, 213 Gagarin, Yuri 304–5 Galilei, Galileo 322 Galileo satellite navigation system 132 Gardner, Frank 90 gas fields xv, 161–3 General Headquarters Line 123 General Motors 101 George I of Hellenes 150, 151 Georgia xi, 173 Germany 48, 84, 122, 131, 133, 136, 153, 164, 181, 218, 219, 303 Gibbon, Edward 273 Gibraltar 273, 274, 285, 286, 296 GIGN 86 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 86, 164 GIUK gap 135 Global Times 29 global warming see climate change gold mining the Sahel 228–9 Australia 14–15 Gorbachev, Mikhail 252 Government of National Accord (GNA) 92 Grand Ethiopian Resistance Dam 244, 259–63 Grand Mosque, Mecca 86 Great Green Wall tree-planting operation 225–6 Greece xv, 45, 142, 181–2 Aegean Sea 142, 143, 159, 160 Ancient 142, 144, 145–9 Athens 142, 145–8, 150 British Empire 150–1 Byzantium 148–9 civil war 154–5 defence 145, 159–60, 163, 165, 166 EEC and EU membership 155–7 financial crisis (2008) and fall-out 155–7, 159 First Balkan War 151 First World War 152 geography 142–5 George I of Hellenes 150, 151 historical invasions 146–8 maritime power 142, 143, 145 Mediterranean gas fields 142, 161–3, 166, 190 migrant/refugee crisis 156–8, 166 military coup (1967) 155 Olympic Games 150, 155 Orthodox refugees 153 Ottoman Empire 149 Peloponnesian Wars 147 Pindos mountain range 144 population distribution 159–60 relationship with Cyprus 143, 160–2, 190 relationship with North Macedonia 160 relationship with the USA 154, 165–6 relationship with Turkey 142, 143, 147, 152–3, 158–60, 161–3, 172, 179, 190, 198 Roman Empire 148 Second Balkan War 151–2 Second World War 153–4 Smyrna port city 152–3 Sparta 142, 146, 147 Thessalonika 151, 153, 154 trade 142, 144–5 Turkish War of Independence 152–3 unification and independence 149–51 Greek Resistance 153, 154 Greenpeace 227 Guantanamo Bay 89 Guardian 133 Gulf Cooperation Council 103 Gulf Coast 39, 42, 62, 74–5, 76, 81 Gulf States 44, 92, 93, 103, 233–4, 259 Gulf Stream 111 Gulf War, first 24 Gürdeniz, Rear Admiral Cem 190 Guterres, António 204 H Habsburg Empire 177 Hadrian’s Wall 109 Hagia Sophia 196–7 Haile Selassie, Emperor 246, 248–51 Hamas 92, 185 Hashem Bathaei-Golpaygani, Ayatollah 63 Hashemites 81, 84 Hejaz, the 81, 84 Henry VIII, King 47, 115–16 Herodotus 263 Hezbollah 58, 91–2, 94 Hippocrates 147 Hippodamus 147 History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) 142 Hitler, Adolf 123, 282–3, 285 Holocaust 154 Hong Kong 30 Hope, Dennis 311 Horn of Africa 216, 232, 241, 243, 247, 258, 259, 263, 297 Houthi forces 44, 58, 61, 93 Huawei 29, 102 Hundessa, Hachalu 255 Hungarian revolution 17 Hussein ibn Ali 47 Hussein, Saddam xi, 53–4, 87–8, 182 hydroelectric power xiv, 20, 192–3, 244, 259–63 Hypatia 147 hypersonic missiles 316 I Iberia 274–5 Ibn Saud 80–4, 104 Iceland 131 Iceni 113 Igbo people 211 Ikhwan army 81 illegal gold mines 228–9 Immigration Restriction Act, Australia 16–17 India xii, 32, 120, 151, 317–18 Industrial Revolution 111, 281 Inmarsat 306 Intelsat 306 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 60 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 156 international sea lanes 5, 24, 32 International Space Station (ISS) 303, 306, 307–8, 319–20 Ionian islands 150 Ionian Sea 143, 160 Iran xi, xii, xiv, 38 2009 election riots 55–6 2019 protests 62–3 2020 election 56–7 American Embassy siege 60–1 Anglo-Persian Oil Company 48, 49 armed forces 44, 52, 57, 62, 63, 65–7 Ayatollah Khomeini 50–4, 86 Azeris 41, 42 Basij militia 55, 65, 66, 67 Council of Guardians 54, 56–7 Covid-19 63 ethnic groups 41–2, 64 geography 38–40, 41 government/regime 41, 42, 44–5, 48, 51, 54–69 historical invasions 40 influence in other Arab countries 58–9, 68, 69, 92 intelligentsia and the arts 64–5 Iraqi Shia militias 91 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps 52, 57, 62, 63, 65–7 Kurds 41–2, 64 languages 41 Majlis 48, 54, 56, 66 military coup (1953) 49–50 mountains 38, 39, 40, 41, 44–5, 53 nuclear programme 60, 61, 68, 69, 92, 131, 136 oil and gas supplies 43, 44, 48, 49, 50, 60, 64 Persian history 44–8, 146 relationship with Israel/anti-Semitism 59–60, 68 relationship with Saudi Arabia 91–2, 93, 94, 103, 219 relationship with the US and the West 44, 48, 49, 50, 57, 60–2, 63, 68–9 repercussions of invading 38–9, 40 Revolution (1979) 42, 47, 50–1 Reza Shah Pahlavi 48–9 Shatt al-Arab waterway 39–40 trade and sanctions against 43, 60, 61, 64 water supplies 42–3 Yemen civil war 57–8 Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) 43, 44, 53–4 Iraq xi, 24, 42, 44, 50, 53, 57, 61, 62, 63, 68, 76, 84, 87, 89, 91, 182, 192, 195 Ireland 109–10, 114, 119 see also Northern Ireland; Republic of Ireland Iron Dome missile defence system 103 Isabella I of Castile, Queen 275 ISIS xv, 61, 104, 195, 204, 214 Islam see Shia Islam; Sunni Islam Islam, early 46–7, 208–9 Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) 212, 213, 214, 215, 223, 233, 234 Islamic Revolution (1979) 42, 47, 50–1 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) 52, 57, 62, 63, 65–7 Islamist Welfare Party 184–5 Ismail, King 47 Israel 45, 52, 59–60, 85, 102–3, 143, 162, 163, 185–6, 317–18 Israel–Gaza conflict (2008) 185–6 Italy 143, 153, 156, 163, 210, 219, 234, 248, 249, 297 J James I and James VI of Scotland, King 116 Janszoon, Willem 9–10 Japan 129 missile defence system 31 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue 32 relationship with Australia 31 Second World War 23–4, 27, 84, 181 SKY Perfect Corporation 318 Jews 41, 45, 59–60, 153, 154, 275 jihad/jihadists 51, 85, 87, 90, 211, 214–15, 216, 222, 223, 228–9, 234–5 Johanson, Donald 240 John, King 115 Johnson, Boris 218 Johnson, Paul 89 Jordan 76, 81, 84, 85, 163 Juan Carlos of Spain, King 287–9 Justice and Development Party 185 K Kebra Nagast 246 Kennedy, John F. 305 Kennedy Space Centre 303 Kenya 242, 243 Kepler, Johannes 322 Khalid of Saudi Arabia 85–7 Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali 54, 59 Khan, Reza 48 Khashoggi, Jamal 94–5 Khatam al-Anbia 66 Khatami, Mohammad 54 Khomeini, Ayatollah 50–4, 59, 86 Khuzestan Province, Iran 64 Kiribati 28 Korean War 24 Kosmos 2542 military satellite 316–17 Kosovo x–xi Koufa, Amadou 222–4 Kurdi, Alan 156 Kurdistan Regional Government 195 Kurds 41–2, 64, 175, 181, 182, 187, 192, 193–4 Kuwait 44, 57, 76, 80, 87–8 L Latin America x, 277, 280–1 Lausanne Treaty (1923) 189–90 League of Nations 137, 249 Lebanon xi, 47, 57, 58, 68, 93–5, 143, 162 Leichhardt, Ludwig 6 Leonidas, King 146 Leonov, Alexei 306 Lesbos 143 Libya xii, 45, 86, 131, 143, 162–3, 173, 187, 198, 297 Libyan civil war 92, 163, 164, 177, 212, 213 Libyan National Army 92 Lithuania 188 Louis, Spyridon 150 Lucky Country, The (D.


pages: 396 words: 117,897

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, additive manufacturing, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, Boeing 747, British Empire, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, energy transition, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, global pandemic, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, megacity, megastructure, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-industrial society, Post-Keynesian economics, purchasing power parity, recommendation engine, rolodex, X Prize

Perhaps the best way to imagine this is to see the global economy behaving for an extended period of time much like Japan's economy has been behaving since 1990: weak or nonexistent growth accompanied by deflation and endless budget deficits. And there are yet other crises and catastrophes that could end the rising consumption of materials, or at least set it back for generations (Smil, 2010). Two of those ever-present risks – a global pandemic and Earth's collision with an asteroid – have been, finally, given closer attention in recent years because of the epidemics of SARS, H1N1, and because of a few relatively close approaches of several asteroids and the spectacular atmospheric disintegration of the Chelyabinsk meteor in February 2013.


pages: 437 words: 115,594

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World by Steven Radelet

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Boeing 747, Branko Milanovic, business climate, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, colonial rule, creative destruction, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, export processing zone, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, John Snow's cholera map, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, land reform, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, megacity, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, off grid, oil shock, out of africa, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sheryl Sandberg, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, Steven Pinker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, women in the workforce, working poor

The development of antibiotics has decreased steadily since the 1960s, with fewer companies bringing forth ever fewer compounds.13 The threats don’t end there. The spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the appearance of the H1N1 virus, and similar outbreaks have stoked concerns that the world could soon face a global pandemic similar to the 1918 influenza outbreak. Any kind of major pandemic, or spread of antimicrobial resistance, is sure to have an enormous effect on developing countries, where the resources and expertise to fight new threats are limited. Finally, an additional emerging health challenge facing developing countries is the increased prevalence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.


pages: 372 words: 111,573

10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness by Alanna Collen

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, biofilm, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, David Strachan, discovery of penicillin, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Fall of the Berlin Wall, friendly fire, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Helicobacter pylori, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, Louis Pasteur, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, microbiome, phenotype, placebo effect, seminal paper, the scientific method

The word ‘irritable’ belies the impact that IBS has on the lives of its sufferers; the disease is consistently ranked as reducing quality of life even more than for patients on kidney dialysis and diabetics reliant on insulin injections. Perhaps it’s the hopelessness that comes with not knowing what’s wrong, nor how to fix it. The spread of IBS is an unremarked global pandemic. One in ten visits to the doctor relate to the condition, and gastroenterologists are kept in a job by the steady flow of sufferers who make up half of their patients. In the United States, IBS leads to 3 million visits to the doctor, 2.2 million prescriptions, and 100,000 hospital visits each year.


pages: 401 words: 115,959

Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop, Michael Green, Bill Clinton

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Bob Geldof, Bonfire of the Vanities, business process, business process outsourcing, Charles Lindbergh, clean tech, clean water, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Dava Sobel, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, digital divide, do well by doing good, don't be evil, family office, financial innovation, full employment, global pandemic, global village, Global Witness, God and Mammon, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Dyson, John Elkington, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Live Aid, lone genius, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, market bubble, mass affluent, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Singer: altruism, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, working poor, World Values Survey, X Prize

The last of these inspired the organization’s fourth and fifth initiatives: improving public services in developing countries by providing much better information about service quality to those who run them and those who use them; and, a longtime personal interest of Brilliant, developing an early-warning and rapid-response infrastructure for global pandemics and other catastrophes. Google.org has seeded Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters (InSTEDD), a nonprofit that is working to better connect the best brains in the technology industry with those responsible for monitoring and responding to such crises. Brilliant stresses that doing good is not limited within the company to Google.org.


pages: 342 words: 114,118

After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, British Empire, centre right, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, gentrification, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, independent contractor, invisible hand, late capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, open economy, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, South China Sea, the long tail, too big to fail, trade route, Washington Consensus, young professional, zero-sum game

Existing structures and inexhaustible grievances will present their own barriers, but there remains the opportunity afforded by each cycle of history: to carefully watch the windup of a pitcher slowed by complacency and a sense of supremacy; to pause for a moment and feel the sum total of experience and brazen belief that propels the underdog’s dash toward home. For my family, and for people battling authoritarianism everywhere Acknowledgments This book took me to several continents over the course of four years and was completed during a global pandemic. It evolved substantially from when I started interviewing people who became its leading characters, as the world continued to change at an accelerating pace. Suffice to say, I could not have finished After the Fall without support and advice from many people in my life. First, I am filled with gratitude for my family.


pages: 444 words: 117,770

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, ASML, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, ChatGPT, choice architecture, circular economy, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, drone strike, drop ship, dual-use technology, Easter island, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, energy transition, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, facts on the ground, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, GPT-3, GPT-4, hallucination problem, hive mind, hype cycle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lab leak, large language model, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, license plate recognition, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, Mustafa Suleyman, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Nikolai Kondratiev, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, profit motive, prompt engineering, QAnon, quantum entanglement, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, SpaceX Starlink, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steven Levy, strong AI, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, techlash, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, TSMC, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, warehouse robotics, William MacAskill, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, zero day

So the strange intellectual half-world of pessimism aversion rumbles on. I should know, I was stuck in it for too long. In the years since we founded DeepMind and since those presentations, the discourse has changed—to some extent. The job automation debate has been rehearsed countless times. A global pandemic showcased both the risks and the potency of synthetic biology. A “techlash” of sorts emerged, with critics railing against tech and tech companies in op-eds and books, in the regulatory capitals of Washington, Brussels, and Beijing. Previously niche fears around technology exploded into the mainstream, public skepticism of technology increased, and criticisms from academia, civil society, and politics sharpened.


pages: 447 words: 111,991

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

Its economy will increasingly depend on high-tech and emerging sectors, and the benefits large agglomerations bring for economic development. That same logic holds true in much of Africa: by 2100, Lagos will be home to more than 88 million people, Dar es Salaam to more than 70 million and Khartoum to almost 60 million.34 Even a global pandemic seemed unable to stop the rise of urban life. The early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic saw a flight from the cities – The Economist reported that 17 per cent of Parisians left the French capital as the country went into lockdown in March 2020.35 Yet cities bounced back with remarkable rapidity.


pages: 358 words: 118,810

Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia by Adrian Shirk

Airbnb, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Buckminster Fuller, buy and hold, carbon footprint, company town, COVID-19, dark matter, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Haight Ashbury, index card, intentional community, Joan Didion, late capitalism, mass incarceration, McMansion, means of production, medical malpractice, neurotypical, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Peoples Temple, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent control, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, transatlantic slave trade, traumatic brain injury, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, yellow journalism, zero-sum game

At a moment when it can seem as if this country will never put its pieces together, Adrian Shirk gives us so many instances, historical and present-day, of Americans finding ways to live in real community, to carve out places of freedom, to be brave enough to stare our unhappinesses in the face and ask What more could there be? In a voice electric with possibility, Shirk reminds us of the great risk and great possibility contained in the act of reimagining home.” —Alex Mar, author of Witches of America “What kind of world will we create in the wake of a global pandemic and armed insurrection, in the midst of climate chaos, systemic racism, and inequity? In Heaven Is a Place on Earth, the brilliant Adrian Shirk is looking for an existence that is more than just mere existence, more than ‘waged labor,’ a life that is less extractive, capitalistic, and crushing.


pages: 481 words: 125,946

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence by John Brockman

Adam Curtis, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, bread and circuses, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, constrained optimization, corporate personhood, cosmological principle, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital rights, discrete time, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elon Musk, Emanuel Derman, endowment effect, epigenetics, Ernest Rutherford, experimental economics, financial engineering, Flash crash, friendly AI, functional fixedness, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information trail, Internet of things, invention of writing, iterative process, James Webb Space Telescope, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, lolcat, loose coupling, machine translation, microbiome, mirror neurons, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, RFID, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Turing machine, Turing test, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Y2K

Some new parts are saving humanity from the mistakes of the traditional programmers: Land-use space satellites alerted us to global warming, deforestation, and other environmental problems and gave us the facts to address those harms. Similarly, statistical analyses of health care, transportation, and work patterns have given us a worldwide network that can track global pandemics and guide public health efforts. On the other hand, some of the new parts—such as the Great Firewall, the NSA, and the U.S. political parties—are scary, because of the possibility that a small group of people can potentially control the thoughts and behavior of very large groups of people, perhaps without those people even knowing they’re being manipulated.


pages: 421 words: 125,417

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs

agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business process, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, digital divide, Edward Glaeser, energy security, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Global Witness, Haber-Bosch Process, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mass immigration, microcredit, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, unemployed young men, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, zoonotic diseases

In the United States, the face of the UN is mainly in its first role, as a debating shop in the UN Security Council. In fact, the UN’s most powerful contributions probably fall into the second and third categories. The UN remains the world’s repository of shared commitments on global objectives, whether in the environmental treaties, the Millennium Development Goals, or the protection against global pandemic diseases. Its agencies are the indispensable providers of public services in the poorest and most vulnerable places on the planet, a role that is almost invisible in the rich countries but nearly omnipresent in the poorest. Beyond the specific acts of peacekeeping and the countless individual development initiatives of UN agencies, the deepest measure of UN success will be whether the Millennium Promises are sustained over time as shared active global goals and whether these goals are achieved in practice.


pages: 405 words: 121,999

The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World by Paul Morland

active measures, agricultural Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, British Empire, clean water, Corn Laws, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Donald Trump, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, open immigration, Ponzi scheme, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, sceptred isle, stakhanovite, Thomas Malthus, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce, working-age population

A Londoner of a hundred years ago would be astonished at the global face of his once more or less exclusively British city and astonished that the British Empire was no more. A Parisian would be similarly surprised to know that the Algerian experiment is over, having left no demographic trace at all in North Africa, while his own city is heavily North African. The demographic trends of the future are to some extent already in process: short of global pandemic or mass movement, we know how many fifty-year-olds there will be in Nigeria or Norway in 2050. However, there may still be surprises in store, and these may be driven by science and technology. It was technology which doubly broke the old Malthusian equation: the earth, it turned out, could provide exponentially for human beings, with the opening up of vast new territories using new ways of moving people and things, and using new ways of growing food; population growth, by contrast, could be cheaply and easily tamed by people’s choices without their having to restrain their natural appetites.


pages: 378 words: 121,495

The Abandonment of the West by Michael Kimmage

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, City Beautiful movement, classic study, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, European colonialism, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gunnar Myrdal, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, Paris climate accords, Peace of Westphalia, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, transatlantic slave trade, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus

For American foreign policy, the ascent of non-European powers calls for a recalibration of the Cold War formulas that Truman and others had devised. As the Obama administration realized, Asia is likely to be the locus of twenty-first-century international affairs. In addition, many of the policy challenges of the twenty-first century, from terrorism to climate change to global pandemics, will be transnational. If they are to be solved at all, it will be only through collective and cooperative action that is global in scope. In 2012, the international relations scholar Charles Kupchan published No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. He was charting the new foreign-policy realities, and Kupchan would go on to serve as the National Security Council’s senior director for Western Europe from 2014 to 2017.


pages: 516 words: 116,875

Greater: Britain After the Storm by Penny Mordaunt, Chris Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, accelerated depreciation, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, failed state, fake news, Firefox, fixed income, full employment, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, impact investing, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lateral thinking, Live Aid, lockdown, loss aversion, low skilled workers, microaggression, mittelstand, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Ocado, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, quantitative easing, remote working, road to serfdom, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, transaction costs, transcontinental railway

NOTES 1 Sadly, they themselves both disappeared in January 2021 and May 2020 from cancer and Covid respectively. 2 http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/10/10-places-brits-love-to-live-in-america 3 https://www.businessinsider.com/british-expats-most-population-destinations-2015-9#4-spain--381025-expats-spain-is-still-high-on-the-list-where-brits-go-for-the-cheap-booze-sunny-weather-and-relatively-easy-integration-into-the-culture-14 INTRODUCTION Three great storms engulfed Britain in the ten years between 2010 and 2020: the financial crisis, the Brexit referendum and the global pandemic. They were similar in the following respects: they were unlike anything in living memory; they derailed longer-term government plans; they required unprecedented, profound and prolonged intervention; they were all eclipsed by each other; they exposed vulnerable communities; they revealed the British character; and they happened because Britain was more connected to the world than ever before.


pages: 592 words: 125,186

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It by Matthew Williams

3D printing, 4chan, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic bias, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, European colonialism, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, gamification, George Floyd, global pandemic, illegal immigration, immigration reform, impulse control, income inequality, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microaggression, Milgram experiment, Oklahoma City bombing, OpenAI, Overton Window, power law, selection bias, Snapchat, statistical model, The Turner Diaries, theory of mind, TikTok, twin studies, white flight

This is absolutely crucial when tackling the question, ‘Why do people commit hate crimes?’ You cannot begin to understand hateful behaviour without looking at the whole picture, from how biology and early socialisation predispose humans to favour the ingroup, right through to how financial meltdowns, global pandemics and artificial intelligence (AI) can create the ideal conditions for hate to flourish. Taking this wide-angle picture is key to understanding hate crime now. The current rate of the breakdown in social relations across the world is arresting. It is no coincidence that soaring hate crime figures are found in countries where the extreme right is rising.


pages: 445 words: 122,877

Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity by Claudia Goldin

coronavirus, correlation coefficient, COVID-19, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, estate planning, financial independence, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, income inequality, Internet Archive, job automation, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, occupational segregation, old-boy network, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, remote working, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Prescott for the University of Michigan Law School Alumni Research Survey Dataset, and Stephanie Hurder for helping me make sense of the data; Bryce Ward for helping create and produce the Harvard and Beyond survey instrument, and Naomi Hausman for making the data usable. The journey that women have taken across the past century and more has been mine as well, and at the end of my journey, I met Domenica Alioto, who made my work more relevant and taught me to appreciate poetry. We each went through difficult times over the past nine months—the anxiety of a global pandemic, the death of my mother, the mental illness of a good friend, the toxic soot-filled air that greeted Domenica in California after she fled the virus in Brooklyn, and the 2020 election. That spring, summer, and fall, I soldiered on, wrote, taught, gardened, and read Domenica’s edits and e-mails: “Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it” (Seamus Heaney, “Digging”).


pages: 451 words: 125,201

What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View by William MacAskill

Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Brownian motion, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, coronavirus, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, effective altruism, endogenous growth, European colonialism, experimental subject, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, global pandemic, GPT-3, hedonic treadmill, Higgs boson, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, lab leak, Lao Tzu, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, long peace, low skilled workers, machine translation, Mars Rover, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, QWERTY keyboard, Robert Gordon, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, seminal paper, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strong AI, synthetic biology, total factor productivity, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, William MacAskill, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

Some of the skills you could focus on include the following:29 • Running organisations • Using political and bureaucratic influence to change the priorities of an organisation • Doing conceptual and empirical research on core longtermist topics • Communicating (for example, you might be a great writer or podcast host) • Building new projects from scratch • Building community; bringing together people with different interests and goals Investing in yourself can pay off in unanticipated ways. For example, based on 80,000 Hours’s advice, Sophie decided not to apply to medical school and instead shifted her focus to global pandemics. She found funding for a master’s degree in epidemiology to build career capital in the area. When COVID-19 broke out, she found a neglected solution: challenge trials, which can greatly speed up the development of vaccines by deliberately infecting healthy and willing volunteers with the novel coronavirus in order to test vaccine efficacy.


pages: 309 words: 121,279

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

air freight, airport security, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, barriers to entry, big-box store, bitcoin, British Empire, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate anxiety, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, global pandemic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Kintsugi, lockdown, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, refrigerator car, sharing economy, social distancing, space junk, Suez canal 1869, Tim Cook: Apple

Thank you to Rob Fearn and the team at what is now the Guardian Saturday magazine for saying yes when few would have. I did not expect then that that email would be the start of a four-year odyssey. In the time since, my eldest daughter has gone from a baby to starting school; we’ve lived through a global pandemic; I developed a chronic health condition; and we’ve had another new addition to the family. Throughout I’ve been lucky to have the support of many people, without whom this book would not be in your hands. My deepest thanks to my agent, Chris Wellbelove, who believed in me and my little rubbish book since the beginning.


pages: 692 words: 127,032

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Lawrence Otto

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Brownian motion, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cepheid variable, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, commoditize, cosmological constant, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Dean Kamen, desegregation, different worldview, disinformation, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fudge factor, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Large Hadron Collider, Louis Pasteur, luminiferous ether, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, ocean acidification, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, sharing economy, smart grid, stem cell, synthetic biology, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, War on Poverty, white flight, Winter of Discontent, working poor, yellow journalism, zero-sum game

What is your view of how science and technology can best be used to ensure national security, and where should we put our focus? 6. Pandemics and Biosecurity. Some estimates suggest that an emerging pandemic could kill more than three hundred million people. In an era of constant and rapid international travel, what steps should the United States take to protect our population from global pandemics and deliberate biological attacks? 7. Genetics Research. The field of genetics has the potential to improve human health and nutrition, but many people are concerned about the effects of genetic modification both in humans and in agriculture. What is the right policy balance between the benefits of genetic advances and their potential risks?


pages: 404 words: 131,034

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 11, Arthur Eddington, clockwork universe, dark pattern, dematerialisation, double helix, Drosophila, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, invention of movable type, invention of the telescope, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Lao Tzu, Louis Pasteur, luminiferous ether, Magellanic Cloud, Mars Rover, Menlo Park, music of the spheres, pattern recognition, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, time dilation, Tunguska event

But we are not sure, and the stakes are high. If we wish to return unsterilized Martian samples to Earth, we must have a containment procedure that is stupefyingly reliable. There are nations that develop and stockpile bacteriological weapons. They seem to have an occasional accident, but they have not yet, so far as I know, produced global pandemics. Perhaps Martian samples can be safely returned to Earth. But I would want to be very sure before considering a returned-sample mission. There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and discoveries this heterogeneous planet holds for us. My most persistent emotion in working with the Viking lander pictures was frustration at our immobility.


pages: 453 words: 130,632

Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood by Rose George

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air freight, airport security, British Empire, call centre, corporate social responsibility, Edward Snowden, global pandemic, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, index card, Jeff Bezos, meta-analysis, microbiome, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, period drama, Peter Thiel, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, Skype, social contagion, stem cell, TED Talk, time dilation

BPL did not act upon Dr. Allen’s warnings. Hemophiliacs had no intention of giving up Factor and going back to endless hospital stays. They wanted it for three reasons: It gave them a life. They didn’t know about hepatitis C. And no one had told them about HIV, insidiously making its way to being a global pandemic. * * * After his TV interview, Julian Miller starred in a documentary.25 It opens with a shot of him shaving, a sly reference to most people’s ignorant belief that hemophiliacs can bleed to death from a nick. There are scenes of Julian walking around his parents’ beautiful home in a beautiful Welsh valley, his stiff walk the mark of a hemophiliac, to those who know the sign language, revealing a person in constant pain.


pages: 510 words: 141,188

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Madoff, Frances Oldham Kelsey, global pandemic, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Ponzi scheme, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Upton Sinclair, urban planning

According to the article, Cipla was offering to sell the AIDS cocktail for $350 a year per patient, or roughly $1 a day, as compared to Western prices of between $10,000 and $15,000 a year, but was being blocked by the multinational drug makers that held the patents, who were being backed by the Bush administration. McNeil’s story “completely broke the dikes,” Jamie Love recalled. Papers all over the world picked it up. News of Big Pharma’s patent protection efforts in the face of the global pandemic and the Bush administration’s support of them sparked international outrage and stoked street protests from Philadelphia to Pretoria, even accusations of genocide. The result was a PR debacle for Big Pharma. Even among the industry’s lowest moments—the illegal marketing of drugs for off-label uses; the payoffs to doctors who acted as promotional mouthpieces; the concealment of negative safety data for high-profile drugs—its stance in South Africa seemed uniquely horrible.


pages: 513 words: 141,963

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari

Airbnb, centre right, drug harm reduction, failed state, glass ceiling, global pandemic, illegal immigration, low interest rates, mass incarceration, McJob, moral panic, Naomi Klein, placebo effect, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Rat Park, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, San Francisco homelessness, science of happiness, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker, traveling salesman, vertical integration, War on Poverty

., After Prohibition, 94-7. 4 Miron, Drug War Crimes, 50. 5 The Global Commission on Drug Policy, led by former U.S. secretaries of state and other governmental leaders, looked at the evidence and concluded: “Virtually all studies on the subject have concluded that increased levels of enforcement activity have been associated with increased drug market violence.” See The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic, 14. See also http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf, accessed January 14, 2014. 6 Anslinger, Protectors, ix. Anslinger, Murderers, 15. 7 Del Quentin Wilbur, “Drug Dealer Gets Life for Killing State Trooper,” Baltimore Sun, December 15, 2001, “Telegraph,” 1A. 8 Leigh said this in her speech to the Cato Institute in the fall of 2011.


pages: 470 words: 137,882

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, desegregation, Donald Trump, global pandemic, Gunnar Myrdal, mass incarceration, microaggression, Milgram experiment, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, Peter Eisenman, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, social distancing, strikebreaker, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois, zero-sum game

Over the years, I have been continually inspired by my ongoing conversations with historian and dear friend Taylor Branch, whose work and perspective often intersect with mine. I am also ever grateful to Sharon Malone and Eric Holder for the grace and thoughtfulness they have shown me. The nature and timetable for a book under production in an era of global pandemic required collaboration and commitment on an epic level. Working remotely in a time of uncertainty, the following people at Penguin Random House, in addition to my editor, Kate Medina, made this book possible: Gina Centrello, whose support I have treasured, and publisher Andy Ward and deputy publisher Avideh Bashirrad.


pages: 475 words: 134,707

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, death of newspapers, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital nomad, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, George Floyd, global pandemic, hive mind, illegal immigration, income inequality, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, performance metric, phenotype, recommendation engine, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Russian election interference, Second Machine Age, seminal paper, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social intelligence, social software, social web, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yogi Berra

Several false coronavirus “cures” killed hundreds of people who drank chlorine or excessive alcohol to rid themselves of the virus. There was, of course, no cure or vaccine at the time. International groups, like the World Health Organization (WHO), fought coronavirus misinformation on the Hype Machine as part of their global pandemic response. My group at MIT supported the COVIDConnect fact-checking apparatus, the official WhatsApp coronavirus channel of the WHO, and studied the spread and impact of coronavirus misinformation worldwide. But we first glimpsed the destructive power of health misinformation on the Hype Machine the year before the coronavirus pandemic hit, during the measles resurgence of 2019.


pages: 430 words: 135,418

Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century by Tim Higgins

air freight, asset light, autonomous vehicles, big-box store, call centre, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, family office, Ford Model T, gigafactory, global pandemic, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, junk bonds, Larry Ellison, low earth orbit, Lyft, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, paypal mafia, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, SoftBank, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration

” *4 In 2018, Tesla sold an estimated 117,000 Model 3 cars compared to 111,000 of the Lexus RX, to make it the top-selling luxury vehicle for the year, according to Edmunds. EPILOGUE “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” Elon Musk tweeted on March 6. It was the same day Apple began encouraging employees to stay home, one of many tech giants taking efforts to slow the spread of the novel virus. The global pandemic of early 2020 was threatening to ruin Tesla’s moment. Just weeks earlier, Musk had been onstage in Shanghai celebrating the start of Model 3 production in China, defying skeptics who thought he couldn’t pull off such a feat in less than a year. Two days after his performance, the World Health Organization announced the discovery of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in Wuhan, a large Chinese city more than five hundred miles to the west.


pages: 460 words: 130,820

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Burning Man, business logic, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Didi Chuxing, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Elon Musk, financial engineering, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greensill Capital, hockey-stick growth, housing crisis, index fund, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Larry Ellison, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Maui Hawaii, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plant based meat, post-oil, railway mania, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, supply chain finance, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, Zenefits, Zipcar

“I’ve been scratching my head for a while on it,” he told CNBC, noting that he wasn’t celebrating WeWork’s troubles. This is a business, he added, “where there are no shortcuts.” His fortune continued to rise through the fall and early spring. IWG’s stock crept up and up, hitting an all-time high in the new year, just before the global pandemic hit. * * * — Meanwhile, WeWork’s struggles continued. The SoftBank-led team began sifting through the wreckage of the inefficient empire Neumann built with their money, casting for ways to turn the business around and lob off fat. An easy spot was WeWork’s eclectic collection of companies, which were put on the sales block.


pages: 432 words: 143,491

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott

Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, gig economy, global pandemic, high-speed rail, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, lockdown, nudge unit, open economy, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Skype, social distancing, zoonotic diseases

Britain has nearly 20 times the number of cases per head of population and 40 times the number of deaths, and somehow we’ve concluded that we can’t learn from that.’1 The final assessment comes from Lord O’Donnell, who would have been in charge of mobilising the civil service if a pandemic had happened when he was cabinet secretary from 2005 to 2011. ‘I think we have to accept the fact that a country that was ranked second in the world for its preparedness for a global pandemic has done very badly on virtually every front. If you look at the health side our outcomes are very poor in terms of excess deaths. On the economic side we’ve got bigger falls in GDP than almost everybody else. If you look at individual wellbeing, which is the best overall measure, we’ve had a very large fall, bigger than in other countries.’2 The death toll from the pandemic’s first year left tens of thousands of families across the country in mourning.


pages: 506 words: 132,373

The Good, the Bad and the History by Jodi Taylor

friendly fire, global pandemic, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, index card, Kickstarter, Late Heavy Bombardment, mutually assured destruction, offshore financial centre, operational security, place-making, urban sprawl

The first thing that struck me was that Insight pods were considerably less sophisticated than those of both St Mary’s and the Time Police. There were cameras but no recorders. No decon lamp that I could see. For all their avowed purpose of preserving and respecting History, they obviously didn’t care what pathogens they carted from one time period to another. I couldn’t help thinking back to the mysterious origins of several global pandemics. No time for that, however. Concentrate, Maxwell. This wasn’t my first Insight pod – I’d once been having a poke inside one when the bloody thing kidnapped me. Which hadn’t been the best moment of my life. This one was almost identical. There was a small control console, a large locker – weapons for the safe stowing of, presumably – together with what seemed to me to be a very inadequate first-­aid kit.


pages: 491 words: 141,690

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire by Jeff Berwick, Charlie Robinson

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, airport security, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, crack epidemic, crisis actor, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, dark matter, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy transition, epigenetics, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial independence, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, information security, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, microapartment, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, new economy, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pill mill, planetary scale, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, private military company, Project for a New American Century, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, South China Sea, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, too big to fail, unpaid internship, urban decay, WikiLeaks, working poor

They specifically mentioned that ventilators would be “limited and difficult to restock”, that request processes for medical supplies from the government were dysfunctional, and there was inadequate testing to see who had contracted this deadly version of the flu. Yet another simulation that was used to study how a global pandemic would affect the world in general, and the United States, in particular, was called Lock Step. In 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation and Global Business Network published a white paper that laid out how governments around the planet would be able to take control of society through a massively publicized pandemic that was set to kill millions of people.


pages: 502 words: 132,062

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence by James Bridle

Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Californian Ideology, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, experimental subject, factory automation, fake news, friendly AI, gig economy, global pandemic, Gödel, Escher, Bach, impulse control, James Bridle, James Webb Space Telescope, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, language acquisition, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, music of the spheres, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, RAND corporation, random walk, recommendation engine, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, speech recognition, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, techno-determinism, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the long tail, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, theory of mind, traveling salesman, trolley problem, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, UNCLOS, undersea cable, urban planning, Von Neumann architecture, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game

The ongoing collapse of this system is evidenced by the general and increasing global dissatisfaction and distrust in government, the rise of charismatic and authoritarian leaders, and an apparent inability to address widespread and systemic issues such as poverty and healthcare, climate change and a global pandemic. That it continues to function is largely and inescapably because we are in thrall to its central mechanism – voting – which the very originators of democracy, the ancient Athenians, viewed as inherently corrupting. When confronted with systems of control which are incapable of generating within themselves the necessary conditions for meaningful change to occur, it is necessary to reach outside them in order to find a source of novelty and strangeness sufficiently powerful to spin the system into a new configuration.


pages: 445 words: 135,648

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales

Airbnb, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital divide, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, emotional labour, fake news, feminist movement, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, global pandemic, helicopter parent, Jaron Lanier, Jeffrey Epstein, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, New Urbanism, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, post-work, Robert Durst, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TikTok, women in the workforce, young professional

I don’t want to tell her what I’ve been hearing from the women who’ve been sending me texts and emails since “love in the time of corona” began (I see the phrase is already getting more than four billion results on Google). Surprisingly, they say nothing much has changed in the dystopian world of online dating, despite the onset of a global pandemic. They’ve sent me screenshots of guys wanting to “quarantine and chill,” “looking to smash with masks.” It’s the usual kind of stuff, but now that there’s the threat of contagion, the numbers game online dating is so often described to be has a different calculation: How many will wind up sick?


pages: 479 words: 140,421

Vanishing New York by Jeremiah Moss

activist lawyer, back-to-the-city movement, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, Broken windows theory, complexity theory, creative destruction, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, East Village, food desert, gentrification, global pandemic, housing crisis, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, junk bonds, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, market fundamentalism, Mason jar, McMansion, means of production, megaproject, military-industrial complex, mirror neurons, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, place-making, plutocrats, Potemkin village, RAND corporation, rent control, rent stabilization, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Skype, starchitect, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, The Spirit Level, trickle-down economics, urban decay, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, young professional

The spirit of the city as we knew it has vanished in the shadow of luxury condo towers, rampant greed, and suburbanization. This is not unique to New York. Hyper-gentrification, the term I use for the force that drives the city’s undoing—gentrification on speed, shot up with free-market capitalism—is a global pandemic, a seemingly unstoppable virus attacking much of the world. San Francisco is dying, maybe even faster than New York. You see it in Portland and Seattle. Austin and Boston. Paris, London, Barcelona, and Berlin have all been infected. The virus has spread as far as Tel Aviv, Beirut, Seoul, and Shanghai.


Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, anti-communist, anti-globalists, autism spectrum disorder, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Cambridge Analytica, capitalist realism, ChatGPT, citizen journalism, Climategate, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, critical race theory, dark matter, deep learning, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hive mind, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lab leak, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, neurotypical, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, profit motive, QAnon, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, shared worldview, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

Only it turned out that the doctor she quoted was not a doctor, but rather a well-known male porn star dressed in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. The tweet revealing the prank (pulled off by The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein) was “liked” seventy-one thousand times. Wolf’s fortunes changed markedly in March 2021, one year after the global pandemic was first declared. This is the start of the After Bannon era. In this period, Wolf both shifted and honed her Covid message, zeroing in on a set of fears related to the prospect of so-called vaccine passports. The idea of using vaccine-verification passports for international travel had been floated months earlier in a slick video produced by the World Economic Forum as part of its “Great Reset” campaign.


pages: 501 words: 145,943

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Benjamin R. Barber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, classic study, clean water, congestion pricing, corporate governance, Crossrail, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, digital divide, digital Maoism, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, gentrification, George Gilder, ghettoisation, global pandemic, global village, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, informal economy, information retrieval, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Lewis Mumford, London Interbank Offered Rate, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, megacity, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, Tony Hsieh, trade route, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, unpaid internship, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, zero-sum game

Santander, Spain, may have the world’s most extensive sensor network, with the company Libelium having installed 400 devices to locate parking spots and 700 more to measure and control ambient parameters for noise and carbon monoxide as well as temperature and sunlight. Remote health exams via the web can offer improvements in urban (and rural) health care, especially for those without regular access to doctors. And electronic record keeping is a money-saving boon to public health that improves patient care and helps cities deal with new global pandemics. Even video games, going all the way back to SimCity (which was issued in a new version in 2013) and Second Life, allow experimentation with modes of urban design and cosmopolitan living. Second Life, like most web-based innovation, may be exploited mainly for entertainment (virtual sex and shopping and partying), but it also includes rules for living, principles of design, and a virtual currency with some real-world value.


The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3D printing, 9 dash line, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, British Empire, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, commodity super cycle, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, LNG terminal, Lyft, Malacca Straits, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, new economy, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, peak oil, pension reform, power law, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, super pumped, supply-chain management, TED Talk, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, women in the workforce

U.S. shale, they expected, would inevitably be a major casualty of a price war, owing to its higher costs and the constant drilling it required, compared to Saudi and Russian conventional oil.2 * * * — Yet what was not fully understood at the beginning of March was that this battle for market share was being launched into a market that was rapidly shrinking owing to the virus. The epidemic in China was turning into a global pandemic. Sixteen years earlier, in 2004, the National Intelligence Council, a research organization in the U.S. intelligence community, had published a report titled Mapping the Global Future, which presented scenarios for the year 2020. One of the scenarios imagined was a pandemic in 2020. It was eerily prophetic, even as to the year: It is only a matter of time before a new pandemic appears, such as the 1918–1919 influenza virus that killed an estimated twenty million worldwide.


pages: 529 words: 150,263

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris by Mark Honigsbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, biofilm, Black Swan, Boeing 747, clean water, coronavirus, disinformation, Donald Trump, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, indoor plumbing, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, moral panic, Pearl River Delta, Ronald Reagan, Skype, the built environment, the long tail, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Twice this pandemic century, in 1976 and again in 2003, scientists thought the world was on the brink of a new influenza pandemic, only to realize that the outbreaks were false alarms and that the real danger lay elsewhere. Then in 2009 the WHO declared that the Mexican swine flu, a ressortment of two well-known H1N1 swine-lineage viruses that had circulated separately for over a decade, met the criterion of a pandemic virus, triggering the activation of global pandemic preparedness plans. On paper, this was the first pandemic of the twenty-first century and the first influenza pandemic in forty-one years. The fact that the swine flu was an H1N1, just like the Spanish flu, raised the prospect that this might be the Big One and that governments should expect a wave of illness and deaths similar to that in 1918–1919.


pages: 569 words: 156,139

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gigafactory, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, NSO Group, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, private spaceflight, quantitative hedge fund, remote working, rent stabilization, RFID, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, two-pizza team, Uber for X, union organizing, warehouse robotics, WeWork

It’s also the story of how a leading technology company became so omnipotent over the course of a single decade that many started to worry that it might definitively tilt the proverbial playing field against smaller companies. And it shows how one of the world’s most famous businesspeople appeared to lose his way, and then tried to find it again—right in the midst of a terrifying global pandemic that further augmented his power and profit. It’s a tale that describes a period in business history when the old laws no longer seemed to apply to the world’s most dominant companies. And it explores what happened when one man and his vast empire were about to become totally unbound. PART I INVENTION Amazon, December 31, 2010 Annual net sales: $34.20 billion Full- and part-time employees: 33,700 End-of-year market capitalization: $80.46 billion * * * Jeff Bezos end-of-year net worth: $15.86 billion CHAPTER 1 The Über Product Manager There was nothing particularly distinctive about the dozen or so low-rise buildings in Seattle’s burgeoning South Lake Union district that Amazon moved into over the course of 2010.


Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by Amy B. Zegart

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, active measures, air gap, airport security, Apollo 13, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Chelsea Manning, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, failed state, feminist movement, framing effect, fundamental attribution error, Gene Kranz, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, index card, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, job automation, John Markoff, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Nate Silver, Network effects, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, operational security, Parler "social media", post-truth, power law, principal–agent problem, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, seminal paper, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, uber lyft, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

But ask American foreign policy leaders what keeps them up at night, and you’re sure to hear something from the nuclear list of horrors: proliferation to countries like Iran, North Korea, and Syria; the risk of conflict between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed neighbors; a Middle East war against nuclear-armed Israel; America’s eroding nuclear deterrence in Europe and Asia; alarming nuclear modernization by Russia and China; nuclear terrorism; nuclear accidents; and the risk of miscalculation and accidental nuclear war by the United States and others. Humans face three foreign policy challenges that are truly existential: global pandemics, climate change, and nuclear annihilation. Only the first two are top of mind for most people these days. Second, nuclear threat intelligence constitutes a tough test for my argument that emerging technologies and open-source information are fundamentally challenging U.S. intelligence. Tough tests are analytically compelling.


pages: 535 words: 149,752

After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul by Tripp Mickle

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, airport security, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Boeing 747, British Empire, business intelligence, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, desegregation, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Frank Gehry, General Magic , global pandemic, global supply chain, haute couture, imposter syndrome, index fund, Internet Archive, inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, thinkpad, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Y2K

Two years earlier: Jena McGregor, “Anderson Cooper was Tim Cook’s Guide for Coming Out as Gay,” Washington Post, August 15, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/08/15/why-tim-cook-talked-with-anderson-cooper-before-publicly-coming-out-as-gay/. He told Cooper that: Anderson Cooper on The Howard Stern Show, May 12, 2020, https://www.howardstern.com/show/2020/05/12/robin-quivers-struggles-turning-down-houseguests-amidst-global-pandemic/. Cook called Tyrangiel: Bloomberg Surveillance, “Apple CEO Tim Cook: I’m Proud to Be Gay” (video), Bloomberg, October 30, 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2014-10-30/apple-ceo-tim-cook-im-proud-to-be-gay. “Throughout my professional life”: Tim Cook, “Tim Cook Speaks Up,” Bloomberg, October 30, 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-30/tim-cook-speaks-up.


pages: 469 words: 149,526

The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine by Christopher Miller

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, Bellingcat, Boris Johnson, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake it until you make it, false flag, friendly fire, game design, global pandemic, military-industrial complex, Ponzi scheme, private military company, rolling blackouts, Saturday Night Live, special economic zone, stakhanovite, wikimedia commons

Shevchenko) here censorship, press here, here, here, here Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) here, here champagne, Ukrainian here chanson music here Chazin, Natan here checkpoints, Kyiv here checkpoint run-ins, CM’s here Chernichkin, Kostya here, here Chernov, Mstyslav here Chernyshov, Oleksiy here child exploitation and propaganda here children’s hospital attack, Mariupol here China here Chornovol, Tetyana here, here Chubarov, Refat here Churchill, Winston here CNN here coal industry, Ukrainian here Communist Party of Ukraine here Cossacks here, here, here, here, here, here, here Covid-19 global pandemic here Crimea here, here, here Belbek air force base here forced referendum on secession (2014) 134-here invasion and annexation of (2014) here, here, here, here, here, here, here Kerch Strait bridge here, here Privolnoye infantry base here pro-Kyiv activists here pro-Moscow militia forces here, here, here, here, here, here pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine demonstrations here relationship with the Ukraine here Sevastopol port here takeover of parliament at Simferopol here Tatars here, here cyberwarfare here Daily Telegraph here, here, here Danilov, Oleksiy here, here, here Debaltseve army base here Debaltseve (2015), Battle of here, here Debaltseve city here, here, here Demchenko, Captain Oleksandr here, here, here Denisova, Lyudmila here Derevyanko, Borys here ‘dictatorship laws’ here Dnipro Battalion here Dnipropetrovsk here Dolgopolov, Alexandr here Dombrovsky Quarry here the Donbas here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here civilian front line devastation here escalation of fighting pre-2022 war here executions by firing squad here, here lack of evacuation programs (2014) here Moscow ‘Russifying’ here presidential election (2014) here pro-Kyiv militia (2014) here pro-Russian demonstrations (2014) here pro-Russian militant forces take power (2014) here referendum on secession here, here, here, here see also individual places by name; Artemivsk; Bakhmut; Battle of the Donbas (2022); Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR); Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR); Mariupol; Slovyansk Donbas Battalion here, here Donetsk here, here, here, here, here, here anti-government demonstrations (2014) here, here, here see also Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Donetsk National University here Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here ‘anti-independence’ celebrations (2014) here Battle of Debaltseve (2015) here, here Battle of Donetsk Airport (2014) here, here, here central morgue here Cossack bomb-disposal squad here forces shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 here, here forces shoot down Ukrainian military aircraft (2014) here kidnappings and interrogation here, here life at the Ramada hotel here Minsk I here, here Minsk II here, here, here pro-Russian/separatist forces here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here propaganda here, here puppet leadership here, here, here, here referendum on secession here, here Russian forces here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Ukrainian presidential election (2014) here Unity Day bus attack (2014) here Victory Day celebrations (2014) here Donetsk soccer stadium here Donetsk Airport (2014), Battle of here, here, here Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic here Donetskie Novosti newspaper here drones, Shahed here, here drones, use of domestic here Dubchak, Andriy here Duliby village here Dzhaparova, Emine here Eastern Partnership Summit here The Economist here election (2014), presidential here election (2019), presidential here Elizabeth II, Queen here Emelyanenko, Captain Maksym here Energoatom – National Nuclear Energy Generating Company here energy/fuel shortages, Kyiv here Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity here armed assaults, 20 February here the Berkut here, here, here, here, here, here conflicts, 1 December here, here, here, here conflicts following ‘dictatorship laws’ here extremist groups here, here, here, here formation of the EuromaidanPR group here Lenin statue toppled here Maidan encampment here, here march on parliament, 18 February here party leaders negotiation with Yanukovych here Party of Regions paid-for demonstration here regional demonstrations here reporters and activists kidnapped and beaten here speakers and performers here, here, here, here, here, here volunteer security corps/samooborona here, here women’s sotnya here Yanukovych flees Mezhyhirya estate here European Commission here European Union here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here evacuation programs here, here, here, here, here, here, here Evening Kvartal TV program here extremist groups, Ukraine here, here, here, here, here, here Fabius, Laurent here Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here Federal Security Service (FSB), Russian here, here, here, here, here, here Fedonyuk, Ruslan here Fedotav, Pyotr here Feldman, Evgeny here, here, here, here Fil, Rima here filtration camps, Russian here, here Financial Times here, here First Strike Company bomb-disposal squad here First World War here, here flags here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Forbes Ukraine here France here, here funerals and memorials, military here Garanich, Gleb here gas industry, Dnipropetrovsk here, here Georgia, invasion of (2008) here, here Germany here, here, here Gilmour, David here Girkin, Igor ‘Strelkov’ here, here, here, here, here, here Glazyev, Sergey here GlobalPost here The Glory of Sevastopol newspaper here Gongadze, Georgiy here Gorchinskaya, Katya here, here, here, here, here, here Gordeyeva, Valentina here Great Patriotic War here, here GRU here, here Grytsenko, Oksana here Gulf War (1990–91) here Hadeyev, Alexander here Haidai, Serhiy here, here hair trade, blonde here Halyna, Dr here Haran, Olexiy here Havryliuk, Mykhailo here Heavenly Hundred - Nebesna Sotnya here Higgins, Eliot here Hilsum, Lindsey here Hitler, Adolf here HIV/AIDS here, here Hollande, François here Holodomor here Holtsyev, Mark here, here Horlivka Institute for Foreign Languages here, here Hromadske TV here Hryluk, Serhiy here Ibraimov, Ildar here, here illegal mines here Ilovaisk here Ilovaisk (2014), Battle of here, here Ilya (Donbas separatist) here, here, here, here Independence Day (2022), Ukrainian here Independence Day (2014), Ukrainian here independence demonstration, 1980s Ukrainian here Independent here Instagram here Irpin, Kyiv Oblast here Irvanets, Oleksandr here Ivan (Ukrainian Orthodox priest), Father here Ivanov, Volodymyr here Ivashchenko, Denis here Izyum here Jakub (Kyiv Post journalist) here Japarov, Eskander here Jews here, here, here, here Johnson, Boris here journalists and activist kidnappings here, here murders/disappearances here, here, here, here Kanayeva, Vera here Kazachenko, Olga Yevgenyevna here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Kazakhstan here Kerch Strait bridge, Crimea here, here Kharkiv here, here, here, here, here Kharkiv Pact here, here Kherson here, here Khersones ancient ruins here Khlyvnyuk, Andriy here Khodakovsky, Alexander here Khokholya, Sergei here Khomyak, Albert here Khrushchev, Nikita here, here, here kidnappings in Crimea here kidnappings, journalist/activist here, here Kiehart, Pete here, here, here, here, here, here Klitschko, Vitali here, here, here, here, here, here Klopotenko, Ievgen here Klymentyev, Vasyl here Kohikov, Petro here Kolomoisky, Igor here Komunar here Konstantin (CM’s friend and language tutor) here Konstantinov, Vladimir here kopanki – illegal mines here Korostylev, Oleg here Koshel, Vitaly here Koshikova, Olena here Koshiw, Isobel here, here, here Kosse, Alina here Kostiuk, Yuriy here Kostyantynivka here Kovalenko, Iryna here Kozak, Dmitry here Kramatorsk here, here, here, here, here Krasne village school here, here, here Krasnoarmiisk here Kravchenko, Yuriy here Kravchuk, Leonid here Kremlin, Russian government in the here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also Moscow, Russian government in; Putin, Vladimir; Russian Federation; Russian military Kryvonozhko, Lieutenant General Anatoliy here, here, here Kryvoruchko, General Serhiy here Kuchma, Leonid here, here, here, here, here Kukharchenko, Colonel Viktor here Kuleba, Dmytro here, here Kulish, Andriy here Kvartal 95 here, here Kyiv city here, here, here, here air strikes, October (2022) here bomb shelters here central railway station here checkpoints here distribution of rifles to civilians here energy conservation here first strikes against (2022) here, here, here Lenin statue toppled here pre-war atmosphere (2022) here road and traffic signs here summertime, post-siege (2022) here Tymoshenko protests here see also Battle of Kyiv (2022); Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity Kyiv City State Administration here, here, here Kyiv Post here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Kyiv, Ukrainian government in here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity; Kuchma, Leonid; Kyiv city; Ukraine; Yanukovych, Viktor; Yushchenko, Viktor; Zelensky, Volodymyr Kyivan Rus here Kyivskiye Vedomosti here Kyrpach, Lyudmyla and Oleksandr here languages, Russian and Ukrainian here, here, here, here Lenin statue toppled, Kyiv here Leninopad here Levin, Maks here ‘little green men’ here, here, here, here Livadia Palace, Crimea here LiveJournal blog here, here Lopushanska, Mariana here Luhansk here, here, here, here, here, here, here morgue and hospital here Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Lukyanchenko, Oleksandr here Lukyanov, Mykola here Lutsenko, Ihor here Lviv here, here Lyagin, Roman here, here Lyashko, Oleh here, here Lyman here Macron, Emmanuel here Maidan camp settlement here Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 here, here search for the missile launch site here Maloletka, Evgeniy here Malyar, Hanna here Malyovana, Viktoria here Malyshev, Mikhail here Mamchur, Colonel Yuli here Manafort, Paul here Mariinka here, here Marinovka here Maritime Guards of the Border Guard Service, Ukrainian here Mariupol here attack and Russian siege (2022) here, here, here Donbas war (2014) here police station shootout here Ukrainian Navy here Markosian, Olena here Markushyn, Oleksandr here, here Martinovskaya, Vera here Mashable here Matchenko, Andriy here Matsuka, Oleksiy here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Mazur, Valentina here McDonald’s here medals of honor here, here, here Medvedchuk, Viktor here, here, here, here Medvedev, Dmitry here, here, here Mejlis here, here Men’s Day here mental health issues, veteran here Merkel, Angela here, here Mezhyhirya estate, Yanukovych’s here Miller, Christopher here accommodation in Artemivsk here in Ana-Yurt, Crimea (2014) here Artemivsk library English club here, here Artwinery, Artemivsk here attacked by Cossacks in Crimea here banned from the DNR and LNR here Battle of Donetsk Airport (2014) here checkpoint run-ins here City Hall in Artemivsk here, here in Crimea (2014) here, here, here in Crimea (2022) here detained by masked rebel fighters here detained by Strelkov here in the Donbas (2014) here, here in the Donbas (2019–22) here, here, here, here, here the Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity here, here exploring the Donbas here first strikes against Ukraine (February 2022) here food in Artemivsk here friends in Artemivsk here, here, here ‘Fuel Duel’ Kyiv Post article here interview with Oleksandr Turchynov here interviews with Volodymyr Zelensky here joins the United States Peace Corps here Krasne village school here, here, here in Kyiv (2022–23) here, here, here, here, here, here in Kyiv (2013–14) here, here Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 here, here in Mariupol here Ministry of Education meeting in Artemivsk here missile strikes against Kramatorsk here, here neighbors in Artemivsk here nightlife and celebrations in Artemivsk here Peace Corps writing grants here, here politics in Artemivsk here Russian and Ukrainian languages here, here, here, here, here Russian Cossack bomb-disposal squad here Russian-Ukrainian Interregional Economic Forum here salary and cost of living in Artemivsk here, here salt mines in Artemivsk here, here uncovering Strelkov’s records here, here visits kopanki illegal mines here Milley, General Mark here Ministry of Education, Ukraine here Ministry of the Interior, Ukraine here Minsk I/Minsk Protocol here, here, here Minsk II/Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements here, here, here, here, here missile systems development, Ukrainian here Moldova here Monastyrsky, Denis here morgue, Donetsk here Moroz, Igor here, here, here, here, here, here Moscow, Russian government in here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here The Moscow Times here Moskva here, here, here murder and disappearances of journalists here, here, here, here Musiy, Oleh here Mykolaivka here Nalyvaichenko, Valentyn here Natasha (CM’s friend in Artemivsk) here, here National Guard, Ukrainian here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here National Memory Union here National Security and Defense Council, Ukrainian here, here Navy, Ukrainian here Nayyem, Mustafa here, here, here Nazar, Natalia here Nazi Germany here, here, here, here, here, here, here occupation of Artemivsk here New Citizen here New York Times here, here New York, Ukraine here Nicholas II, Tsar here Night Wolves biker group here Nihoyan, Serhiy here Nikolaychuk, Andriy here NKVD, DNR here Normandy Format Group here North American Treaty Organization (NATO) here, here, here Novosti Donbassa here, here, here, here, here, here, here Novy Stil here nuclear fuel supplies here Nuland, Victoria here, here Nykyforov here Obama, Barack here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Obolon district, Kyiv here, here Odesa here, here Odnorih, Halyna here ‘Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow,’ Ukrainian battle hymn here Okean Elzy here, here Oksana and Daria (displaced Mariupol residents) here Oleksiivna, Katerina here Olenivka prison here oligarchs, Ukrainian here, here, here, here, here Oliphant, Roland here, here, here openDemocracy here Oplot here Opposition Bloc – For Life party here Opytne here Orange Revolution here, here, here, here Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) here, here Osmolovska, Aliona here Ostaltsev, Leonid here, here Paevska, Julia ‘Taira’ here Palace of Culture, Mariupol here Pan, Cor here Panchenko, Valentina here Paradise nightclub, Artemivsk here Parasiuk, Volodymyr here Party of Regions here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity; Yanukovych, Viktor Parubiy, Andriy here, here Paton Walsh, Nick here Patriot of Ukraine here Patrushev, Nikolai here Pavlov, Arsen here Peter the Great here Petsa, Myroslava here Pichko, Maria and Oleksiy here, here Pinchuk, Viktor here, here Podufalov, Pavel here Pokrovsk here, here Poland/Polish people here, here, here, here, here, here police force, Ukrainian here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here war time recruits in Kyiv here station shootout, Mariupol here Ponomarev, Vyacheslav here Poroshenko, Petro here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD here Potemkin demonstrations here Povalyaeva, Svitlana here Pravda here presidential election (2014), Ukrainian here presidential election (2019), Ukrainian here press/media bribes here censorship here, here, here control in the Donbas here, here Priazovskii rabochii newspaper here Prigozhin, Evgeny here, here prisoner exchanges here, here Prisoners of War here, here, here, here, here, here, here Privolnoye infantry base, Crimea here pro-Kyiv militia in the Donbas (2014) here Prokhanov, Alexander here propaganda, Russian here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Pukach, Oleksiy here Purgin, Andrei here, here Pushilin, Denis here Putin, Vladimir here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here announces ‘special military operation’ (2022) here, here Customs Union proposal here, here invasion and annexation of Crimea here, here, here, here, here, here Kerch Strait bridge here, here Minsk II here, here, here, here Mariupol Port here and Volodymyr Zelensky here, here, here Wagner Group here, here see also Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR); Kremlin, Russian government in the; Moscow, Russian government in, Russian Federation; Russian Military Pyatt, Geoffrey here Pyrozhenko, Alexander here Radical Party here railway station, Kyiv central here Ramada Hotel, Donetsk here, here Ratushnyi, Roman and Taras here Red Army Day here Red Cross here refugee crisis here rent-a-crowd protests here, here, here Reporters Without Borders here Reva, Mayor Oleksiy here, here, here Revolution of Dignity see Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity Revolution on Granite here Reznikov, Oleksiy here, here RIA Novosti newspaper here ribbon of St George – kolorady here Right Sector here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here riot police – Berkut here, here, here, here, here, here Road Control here Rogozin, Dmitry here Roosevelt, Franklin D. here Rostislav ‘Slava’ (CM’s friend) here, here Ruslana here Russian Empire here Russian Federation here Customs Union proposal here, here, here, here expulsion of US Peace Corps here financial support for Ukraine here, here Federal Security Service (FSB) here, here, here, here, here, here, here nuclear fuel supplies here President Zelensky’s address to here pro-Russian demonstrations, Ukraine here propaganda here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Putin announces ‘special military operation’ here, here see also Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR); Kremlin, Russian government in the; Moscow, Russian government in; Putin, Vladimir; Russian military Russian military here, here atrocities in Bucha here attack and siege of Mariupol (2022) here, here attacks against civilians here, here, here, here Baltic Fleet at Mariupol here Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol here, here, here, here, here bomb the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, Yavoriv here conflict escalation in the Donbas, pre-2022 war here detention and interrogation civilians here first attacks against Ukraine (2022) here injured soldiers pose as Ukrainians here Izyum – Donbas front line here Kyiv airstrikes October (2022) here in the Donbas (2014) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here in the Obolon district, Kyiv here, here invasion and annexation of Crimea here, here, here, here, here Privolnoye infantry base here Prisoners of War here, here recruitment of state prisoners here second day strikes on Kyiv (2022) here seizure of Ukrainian navy ships, Sevastopol here shoot down civilian Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 here, here target Antonov Airport here target Bakhmut here, here, here, here target Irpin district here unprepared and uninformed troops here US intelligence regarding here, here, here withdrawal from Kyiv Oblast here, here Russian Revolution here Russian Spring/pro-Russian demonstrations here Russian-Ukrainian Interregional Economic Forum here Russian Unity party here Rybachuk, Oleg here, here Rybakova, Iryna here, here, here, here, here Rychkov, Vadym here, here Rychkova, Tetiana ‘Tanya’ here saboteurs, Russian here, here, here Sadokhin, Colonel Ihor here St Michael’s Monastery and Cathedral, Kyiv here, here, here, here Salim, Mohd Ali bin Md here salt mines, Artemivsk here, here samooborona/volunteer security corps 97 here sanctions and travel bans, Western here, here, here, here Savur-Mohyla here, here Sea of Azov here Second World War here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Seddon, Max here, here Semenchenko, Semen here, here Sentsov, Oleg here Sergatskova, Katya here Sergei Prokofiev International Airport here Sergeyev, Fyodor ‘Artyom’ here Servant of the People party here Servant of the People TV program here, here Sevastopol, Crimea here, here, here Severodonetsk here Shakhtar Donetsk FC here Shanghai here, here Shevchenko, Petro here Shevchenko, Taras here, here Shevchuk, Oleg here Shmyhal, Denys here Sikorski, Radosław here Simmonds, Julian here Sisenko, Oleksandra here Sizov, Vitaliy here Skibitsky, General Vadym here Skuratovsky, Ivan here Slava (CM’s friend from Artemivsk) here, here, here, here, here Slavov, Dmytro here Slavutych warship, Ukrainian here Slok, Gary here Slovyansk here, here, here Snake Island border guards here Sneider, Noah here, here, here, here, here Snizhne here Sobytiya newspaper here Social–National Party of the Ukraine (SNPU) here Sokolov, Nikolai Georgievich here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Soledar, Ukraine here, here sotnya units here, here South Ossetia here Soviet Air Force here Soviet Union here, here, here, here collapse of here, here, here, here Great Patriotic War/WWII here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here persecution and exile of Tatars here propaganda here Soviet-era weapons and vehicles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Ukraine as part of here, here war in Afghanistan here, here St Paul Pioneer Press here The St Petersburg Times here Stakhanov, Aleksey here Stalin, Joseph here, here, here, here, here statues and monuments here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Stefanchuk, Ruslan here Steinmeier, Frank-Walter here Stepanov, Anatoliy here, here, here Stoyanov, Serhiy here Strashko, Nina here Strutynska, Senior Lieutenant Valentina here, here, here Strutynskyi, Yevhen here student newspaper, Donetsk National University here student protesters here, here, here, here supply runs to troops, civilian here Supreme Court, Ukraine here Surkov, Vladislav here Surovikin, General Sergei here surzhyk here, here, here Svoboda here, here, here, here, here Sybirtsev, Oleksandr here Sydor, Father Ivan here Syrova, Tetyana here Taganrog prison, Russia here Tarasenko, Andriy here Tatars, Crimean here, here, here, here Ternopil corvette, Ukrainian here Territorial Defense Force here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here The Times here Thorez, Maurice here Time magazine here Tinkalyuk, Ruslan here, here, here titushki here, here, here, here, here Torez here, here, here trade agreement proposal, EU here Trade Unions Building, Kyiv here, here Transfiguration of The Lord Pentecostal Church, Slovyansk here Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine here Trump, Donald here Trusov, Platoon Commander Valentin here tryzub here, here Tryzub (paramilitary group) here, here, here Tsybulska, Liubov here, here Tsyupa, Oksana here Turchynov, Oleksandr here, here, here, here, here, here Turevich, Anatoliy here Twitter here, here, here, here Tyahnybok, Oleh here, here, here, here, here, here Tychyna, Private Ihor here Tykhomirova, Nina here Tymoshenko, Yevheniya here Tymoshenko, Yulia here, here, here, here, here, here, here Tyshchenko family here UDAR party here UEFA European Football Championship (2012) here Ukraine artificial famine/Holodomor here declaration of independence (1991) here, here, here decommunization program here emergence of nation here first strikes against (February 2022) here HIV/AIDS epidemic here illegal mining industry here Independence Day celebrations (2014) here industrial water pollution here journalist murders and disappearances here, here, here, here Minsk I here, here, here Minsk II here, here, here, here nuclear fuel supplies here Orange Revolution here, here, here as part of the Soviet Union here, here, here pre-war atmosphere (2022) here presidential campaign and election (2019) here presidential election (2014) here pro-Russian demonstrations (2014) here Putin’s Customs Union proposal here, here, here, here relationship with Crimea here relationship with the European Union here, here response to US intelligence warnings here, here Tymoshenko protests here see also individual places by name; Artemivsk; Crimea; the Donbas; Donetsk; Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR); Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity; Kyiv city; Kyiv, Ukrainian government in; Miller, Christopher; Ukrainian military Ukrainian Front here Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) here, here Ukrainian military here, here airborne forces here, here, here, here airstrike on Snizhne here Antonov Airport attack here Battle for Bakhmut (2022) here, here Battle of Debaltseve (2015) here, here Battle of Donetsk Airport (2014) here, here Battle of Ilovaisk (2014) here, here Central Air Command here, here death of two brothers here defending Irpin here dismantled by Yanukovych here forces at Belbek air force base, Crimea here forces at Privolnoye infantry base, Crimea here, here front line, Izyum here funerals and memorial services here Independence Day celebrations (2014) here Maritime Guards of the Border Guard Service here the navy here, here outbreak of war (2022) here pre-2022 war in the Donbas here Prisoners of War here, here, here, here, here Putin addresses here retake Slovyansk here, here siege of Mariupol (2022) here surrender in the Donbas here take out Moskva, Russian flagship here, here Tanya Rychkova’s supply runs here, here volunteer food supplies here, here weapons development here, here Western arms and ammunition supplies here withdrawal from Crimea here withdrawal from Debaltseve here see also Berkut; National Guard; police force, Ukrainian; Security Service of Ukraine (SBU); Territorial Defense Force Ukrainian War of Independence (1917–21) here Ukrainska Pravda newspaper here, here, here Ukrainskiy Vybor organization here Ukravtodor here ultranationalists, Ukraine here, here, here, here, here United Kingdom here, here United Nations here, here United States Embassy, Ukraine here United States of America here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here ‘Fuck the EU’ - Victoria Nuland YouTube conversation here intelligence warnings to the Ukraine here, here, here, here offer to evacuate Zelensky here sanctions and travel bans here, here, here United States Peace Corps here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Unity Day bus attack (2014), Donetsk here Unity Day clashes, Kyiv (2014) here Vakarchuk, Svyatoslav here Valeryevna, Maria here Varenytsia, Inna here, here Varianitsyn, Second Captain Roman here Vasylkiv here, here Vechernyaya Odesa here Velyka Novosilka here Verbytsky, Yuriy here Veremiy, Vyacheslav here Verkhnya Krynka here Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine parliament here, here, here, here, here Vesti newspaper here Victory Day celebrations and referendum here, here Vika (CM’s language tutor and friend) here Viktor (kopanki miner) here Vindman, Alexander here Vitaliy (apprentice surgeon in Kyiv) here Vitko, Vice-Admiral Aleksandr here VKontakte here, here Vlasova, Anastasia here, here Volodymyr (pro-Russian Crimean militiaman) here Voronenko, Oleksandr here, here, here Vpered newspaper here Vyacheslav, Yarko here Vyshyvana, Ahafiya here Vyshyvaniy, Kyrylo and Vasyl here vyshyvanky shirts here, here, here Wagner Group here, here war crimes/atrocities, Russian here Warners, Tom here water pollution, industrial here water supplies here weapon depot, Paraskoviivka here, here weapon supplies, Western here, here Webb, Isaac here, here, here Westinghouse here White Hammerhere Wild Ducks volunteer unit here Wings of Phoenix here Women’s Day here women’s sotnya here writing grants, Peace Corps here, here Yakymenko, Oleksandr here Yalta Conference (1945) here Yanukovych, Viktor here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Euromaidan protests and revolt here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Mezhyhirya estate and destruction of state secrets here Yarosh, Dmytro here, here, here Yatchenko, Sergei here Yatsenyuk, Arseniy here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Yavoriv here Yelets, Volodymyr here Yermak, Andriy here, here, here YouTube here, here, here, here, here, here Yurash, Sviatoslav here, here Yushchenko, Viktor here, here, here Zahoor, Kamaliya here Zahoor, Mohammad here, here Zaitsev, Denis ‘Raven’ here Zakharchenko, Alexander here Zakharchenko, Vitaliy here Zaldastanov, Aleksandr here Zaluzhny, Valery here, here, here Zaporozhzhia here Zarivna, Daria here Zavtra newspaper here Zelenska, Olena here, here, here Zelensky, Volodymyr here address to the Russian federation here addresses the Ukraine here, here, here, here, here, here, here civilian mobilization here Donald Trump scandal here economic forum in Mariupol (2020) here outbreak of war (Feb 2022) here, here presidential campaign (2019) here press conference (Jan 2022) here refuses option to evacuate Kyiv here response to US warnings about Russia here television career here, here visits remains of Bucha here and Vladimir Putin here, here, here Zhilin, Evgeny here Zhilkin ‘the Body Collector’, Yaroslav here Zhyzneuski, Mikhail here Ziyatdinov, Aziz here, here Zverkovsky, Danil here BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc This electronic edition first published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Christopher Miller 2023 Christopher Miller has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work Map credits: Ukraine © PeterHermesFurian/Getty Images; The Donbas © Goran_tek-en, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; Crimea © PeterHermesFurian/Getty Images All rights reserved.


pages: 551 words: 174,280

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

agricultural Revolution, Albert Michelson, anthropic principle, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Bonfire of the Vanities, Charles Babbage, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cosmological principle, dark matter, David Attenborough, discovery of DNA, Douglas Hofstadter, Easter island, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, first-past-the-post, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, Gödel, Escher, Bach, illegal immigration, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Jacquard loom, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kenneth Arrow, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, mirror neurons, Nick Bostrom, pattern recognition, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, Richard Feynman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, seminal paper, Stephen Hawking, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales of Miletus, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Review, William of Occam, zero-sum game

This is often held up as an indictment of – to give it its broad context – Enlightenment hubris. We need lose only one battle in this war of science against bacteria and their weapon, evolution (so the argument goes), to be doomed, because our other ‘so-called progress’ – such as cheap worldwide air travel, global trade, enormous cities – makes us more vulnerable than ever before to a global pandemic that could exceed the Black Death in destructiveness and even cause our extinction. But all triumphs are temporary. So to use this fact to reinterpret progress as ‘so-called progress’ is bad philosophy. The fact that reliance on specific antibiotics is unsustainable is only an indictment from the point of view of someone who expects a sustainable lifestyle.


pages: 1,015 words: 170,908

Empire by Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, colonial rule, conceptual framework, disinformation, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global pandemic, global village, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, invisible hand, late capitalism, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, open borders, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, social intelligence, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois

If we break down global boundaries and open universal contact in our global village, how will we prevent the spread of disease and corruption? This anxiety is most clearly revealed with respect to the AIDS pandemic.2 The lightning speed of the spread of AIDS in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia demonstrated the new dangers of global contagion. As AIDS has been recognized first as a disease and then as a global pandemic, there have developed maps of its sources and spread that often focus on central Africa and Haiti, in terms reminiscent of the colonialist imaginary: unrestrained sexuality, moral corruption, and lack of hygiene. Indeed, the dominant discourses of AIDS prevention have been all about hygiene: We must avoid contact and use protection.


Alpha Trader by Brent Donnelly

Abraham Wald, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, backtesting, barriers to entry, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, buy low sell high, Checklist Manifesto, commodity trading advisor, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, deep learning, diversification, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, endowment effect, eurozone crisis, fail fast, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, full employment, global macro, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, high net worth, hindsight bias, implied volatility, impulse control, Inbox Zero, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, iterative process, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, law of one price, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market microstructure, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, McMansion, Monty Hall problem, Network effects, nowcasting, PalmPilot, paper trading, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, prediction markets, price anchoring, price discovery process, price stability, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, secular stagnation, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side project, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, survivorship bias, tail risk, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, time dilation, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, very high income, yield curve, you are the product, zero-sum game

While a strong US economic data point should be a catalyst for a higher dollar, for example, there are plenty of days when data comes in strong and the USD goes down. There are many types of market catalyst. Here is a list of some biggies, working from most macro to least. Market catalysts 1. International geopolitics (e.g., trade war, G20 Summit, global pandemic, OPEC meeting, military conflict) 2. Domestic politics (elections, coups, scandals, passage of new laws, court decisions) 3. Central bank action or speeches 4. Economic data 5. Company news a. Earnings b. Analyst up/downgrades c. Personnel changes (especially CEO or CFO) d. Capital structure (dividends, buybacks, secondary issuance) 6.


pages: 665 words: 159,350

Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else by Jordan Ellenberg

Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Andrew Wiles, autonomous vehicles, British Empire, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, East Village, Edmond Halley, Edward Jenner, Elliott wave, Erdős number, facts on the ground, Fellow of the Royal Society, Geoffrey Hinton, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, government statistician, GPT-3, greed is good, Henri Poincaré, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, John Nash: game theory, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Bachelier, machine translation, Mercator projection, Mercator projection distort size, especially Greenland and Africa, Milgram experiment, multi-armed bandit, Nate Silver, OpenAI, Paul Erdős, pets.com, pez dispenser, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, side hustle, Snapchat, social distancing, social graph, transcontinental railway, urban renewal

Kehrling, so they must be acquainted. And as it happens I myself also know Mr. Kehrling quite well. Apart from the low figure for the world’s population, this could have been written in 2020. The anxiety and unsettledness the narrator feels is the same one we now feel, in the middle of a global pandemic, and the same one Guare’s characters feel, holed up in their Upper East Side apartment. It is an anxiety about the geometry of the world we live in. We evolved to understand a world where what was near us was what we could see, hear, and touch. The geometry we inhabit now, and the one Karinthy in the 1920s was already having to get used to, is different.


pages: 505 words: 161,581

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Ada Lovelace, AltaVista, Apple Newton, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, book value, business logic, butterfly effect, call centre, Carl Icahn, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, COVID-19, crack epidemic, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, digital map, disinformation, disintermediation, drop ship, dumpster diving, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, fixed income, General Magic , general-purpose programming language, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global pandemic, income inequality, index card, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet Archive, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Kwajalein Atoll, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, money market fund, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Potemkin village, public intellectual, publish or perish, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, SoftBank, software as a service, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, technoutopianism, the payments system, transaction costs, Turing test, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Y2K

She didn’t know me from Adam, and she could have been forgiven for rejecting the assignment. I’m glad she didn’t. Stephanie Frerich’s stewardship of this project was the greatest blessing. She read every line of this book several times, devotedly and doggedly pushed my thinking, and fought for this project in the face of delays and amid a global pandemic. There is not enough space to point out every error she corrected or weak sentence she strengthened, and if this book manages to tell the PayPal story faithfully and well, it is because of her efforts. She was what every author hopes for: an editor who cares about the project as much as the author does.


The Economic Weapon by Nicholas Mulder

anti-communist, Boycotts of Israel, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, classic study, deglobalization, European colonialism, falling living standards, false flag, foreign exchange controls, global pandemic, guns versus butter model, Monroe Doctrine, power law, reserve currency, rising living standards, Suez crisis 1956, transatlantic slave trade, éminence grise

The interwar history of sanctions is instructive for our twenty-first-century world in another way as well. Sanctions exploited the economic networks of interwar globalization but ultimately undermined its political foundations. Today, as the world economy reels from financial crises, nationalism, trade wars, and a global pandemic, sanctions are aggravating existing tensions within globalization. That sanctions are intended to promote international stability is, unfortunately, no defense against this risk: unintended negative consequences can be just as destructive as premeditated harms. Interwar history should sharpen our sense of what the stabilizing power of provision could have done if it had not been overshadowed by the destabilizing effects of deprivation, real and imagined.


pages: 651 words: 162,060

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Assuming this figure applies beyond his studies, then if 25 per cent of the population visibly change their practices, norms and behaviours, the climate movement’s victories should be more widely accepted, durable and effective. Of course, this may seem like a much harder task than organizing 3.5 per cent of the population for mass protests. But research shows that the 25 per cent threshold can be reached with surprising speed. In times of crisis, such as a global pandemic, our societies can quickly change our behaviours and practices, for example wearing a mask, washing our hands and physically distancing ourselves from others. As with public health, when it comes to climate justice, we have a solid understanding of what behaviours need to change directly – which industries we support, what types of energy we buy, how we heat and cool our homes, what we eat, where and how we travel, how we process waste, how much we invest in bold, sustainable technologies and programmes, and how often we consider sustainability in our day-to-day choices – on a global scale.


pages: 541 words: 173,676

Generations: the Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future by Jean M. Twenge

1960s counterculture, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, airport security, An Inconvenient Truth, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, critical race theory, David Brooks, delayed gratification, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job automation, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McJob, meta-analysis, microaggression, Neil Armstrong, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, QAnon, Ralph Nader, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, superstar cities, tech baron, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, TikTok, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Boomers, who dominated the culture for decades, are retiring at a rapid clip. Gen X’ers are moving into top leadership positions, sometimes reluctantly. Millennials are entering the prime of life and are seeking more responsibility. Gen Z’ers are finding their voice and understanding their influence. Polars are overcoming getting their start during a global pandemic, with the potential for strength and resilience born of adversity. Mining data collected across decades gives us a broader and more accurate picture of generational differences than ever before. That data clearly shows that attitudes, personality traits, behaviors, education, and the speed of life have all changed tremendously over these six generations.


pages: 602 words: 177,874

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, Chris Wanstrath, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, demand response, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Flash crash, fulfillment center, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, linear programming, Live Aid, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, ocean acidification, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, planetary scale, power law, pull request, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Transnistria, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban decay, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

I say all of this without meaning to criticize; there were good reasons for Obama’s circumspection when it came to the Middle East. Elsewhere, such as in eastern Europe and Asia, Obama actually reinforced America’s military presence to balance Russia and China, and his use of the American military to stem the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa was decisive in preventing a global pandemic. So the notion that America under Obama just withdrew from the world is nonsense. But there was a pulling back in the Middle East, and it had two major consequences: it abetted the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, and it contributed to the massive outflow of refugees from that region into Europe.


pages: 573 words: 180,065

On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads by Tim Cope

feminist movement, global pandemic, illegal immigration, Iridium satellite, mass immigration, trade route

This not only provided military advantage but also helped prevent vassal states from revolting by keeping the people happy with stability and thriving economies. Just as this complex network could carry a messenger or Silk Road trader from Mongolia to Europe without affray, it equally aided the passage of the plague. Just like a global pandemic would do today, the plague paralyzed the flow of trade, isolating cities and countries, and eventually entire continents. Mongolian aristocracies found themselves with depleted militaries, unable to procure the same kind of taxes that had funded the empire, and more outnumbered by subjects than ever before.


pages: 816 words: 191,889

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American ideology, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Bretton Woods, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, defense in depth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, George Floyd, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, positional goods, post-truth, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, special economic zone, TikTok, trade liberalization, transaction costs, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, zero-sum game

., “How to Recognize and Understand the Century’s Great Changes [如何认识和理解百年大变局].” 41Ibid.Zhang Yunling [张蕴岭] et al. 42“Deeply Understand the Big Test of Epidemic Prevention and Control [深刻认识疫情防控这次大考],” People’s Daily [人民日报], April 23, 2020. 43Chen Qi [陈琪], “The Impact of the Global Coronavirus Pandemic on the Great Changes Unseen in a Century [全球新冠疫情对百年未有大变局的影响],” Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China [中华人民共和国商务部], April 22, 2020, http://chinawto.mofcom.gov.cn/article/br/bs/202004/20200402957839.shtml. 44“Peking University Center for American Studies Successfully Held an Online Seminar on U.S. and China Relations under the Global Pandemic [北京大学美国研究中心成功举办‘全球疫情下的美国与中美关系’线上研讨会],” School of International Studies, Peking University [北京大学国际关系学院], April 13, 2020, https://www.sis.pku.edu.cn/news64/1324227.htm. 45Chen Jimin, “COVID-19 Hits International System,” China-US Focus, April 27, 2020, https://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/covid-19-hits-international-system. 46Wu Baiyi, “American Illness.” 47“Deeply Understand the Big Test of Epidemic Prevention and Control [深刻认识疫情防控这次大考].” 48Yuan Peng [袁鹏], “The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Great Changes Unseen in a Century [新冠疫情与百年变局],” Contemporary International Relations [现代国际关系], no. 5 (June 2020): 1–6. 49Shi Zehua [史泽华], “Why Has American Populism Risen at This Time [美国民粹主义何以此时兴起],” U.S.


pages: 775 words: 208,604

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel

agricultural Revolution, assortative mating, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, confounding variable, corporate governance, cosmological principle, CRISPR, crony capitalism, dark matter, declining real wages, democratizing finance, demographic transition, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, fixed income, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, land tenure, low skilled workers, means of production, mega-rich, Network effects, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, synthetic biology, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, very high income, working-age population, zero-sum game

Journal of Economic Perspectives 18: 51–74. Murphey, Rhoads. 1999. Ottoman warfare, 1500–1700. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Murray, Charles. 2012. Coming apart: the state of white America. New York: Crown Forum. Murray, Christopher J. L., et al. 2006. “Estimation of potential global pandemic influenza mortality on the basis of vital registry data from the 1918–20 pandemic: a quantitative analysis.” Lancet 368: 2211–2218. Murray, Sarah C. 2013. “Trade, imports, and society in early Greece: 1300–900 B.C.E.” PhD thesis, Stanford University. Nafziger, Steven, and Lindert, Peter. 2013.


pages: 829 words: 186,976

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't by Nate Silver

airport security, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, availability heuristic, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, book value, Broken windows theory, business cycle, buy and hold, Carmen Reinhart, Charles Babbage, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Edmond Halley, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, en.wikipedia.org, equity premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, fear of failure, Fellow of the Royal Society, Ford Model T, Freestyle chess, fudge factor, Future Shock, George Akerlof, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, haute cuisine, Henri Poincaré, high batting average, housing crisis, income per capita, index fund, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Japanese asset price bubble, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Laplace demon, locking in a profit, Loma Prieta earthquake, market bubble, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, negative equity, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oklahoma City bombing, PageRank, pattern recognition, pets.com, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Plato's cave, power law, prediction markets, Productivity paradox, proprietary trading, public intellectual, random walk, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, savings glut, security theater, short selling, SimCity, Skype, statistical model, Steven Pinker, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, University of East Anglia, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, wikimedia commons

This mix almost perfectly describes the conditions found in Southeast Asian countries like China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam (China alone is home to about half the world’s pigs34). These countries are very often the source for the flu, both the annual strains and the more unusual varieties that can potentially become global pandemics.* So they have been the subject of most of the medical community’s attention, especially in recent years because of the fear over another strain of the virus. H5N1, better known as bird flu or avian flu, has been simmering for some years in East Asia and could be extremely deadly if it mutated in the wrong way.


pages: 827 words: 239,762

The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite by Duff McDonald

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, deskilling, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, eat what you kill, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, new economy, obamacare, oil shock, pattern recognition, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, pushing on a string, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, random walk, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, survivorship bias, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, urban renewal, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

In 2010, he did what few of his colleagues have ever done, which is to admit that the School actually had a responsibility that it has failed to live up to. “If you look at the kinds of problems that our society faces, not only American society, but global society—sustainability, climate change, global pandemics, entrenched poverty—these are issues that will require business to be part of the solution,” he said. “But business will not be part of the solution if it is populated by individuals who have a very narrow conception of what their role is, who have a very narrow view about how business fits into the larger institutions of society.


How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Donald Trump, East Village, estate planning, facts on the ground, global pandemic, Live Aid, medical residency, placebo effect, Ronald Reagan, sensible shoes, sugar pill, trickle-down economics

If you knew what to look for, you saw in their faces the burden of a shared past, the years and years of similar services. This was what survivors of the plague looked like. The crowd swelled to five hundred. Some among them were adorned in mementos: faded protest buttons or T-shirts with militant slogans. This was the generation that fought AIDS from the dawn of the global pandemic. Most had been members or supporters of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP—the radical protest organization that started in New York City but went on to count 148 chapters in 19 countries, with perhaps 10,000 members at its peak. The movement collapsed in the mid-1990s, when the advent of effective medicine finally staunched much of the dying.


pages: 1,028 words: 267,392

Wanderers: A Novel by Chuck Wendig

Black Swan, Boston Dynamics, centre right, citizen journalism, clean water, Columbine, coronavirus, crisis actor, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, fake news, game design, global pandemic, hallucination problem, hiring and firing, hive mind, Internet of things, job automation, Kickstarter, Lyft, Maui Hawaii, microaggression, oil shale / tar sands, private military company, quantum entanglement, RFID, satellite internet, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, supervolcano, tech bro, TED Talk, uber lyft, white picket fence

Strife was born in its wake. It conjured fear and paranoia, and those things internally led to localized violence, then rioting, then civil wars. And that was something Benji had only seen on a local scale, mostly in Africa. But White Mask was more than just localized pockets of Ebola. It was a global pandemic. A hundred thousand dead days ago. Double that now, probably. It was moving faster than people could keep up. It wasn’t just the dead. It was the fact so many of the living were infected—many that wouldn’t know it yet for a month or more. What would happen then? Yes, people would die.


pages: 1,261 words: 294,715

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biofilm, blood diamond, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Brownian motion, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fudge factor, George Santayana, global pandemic, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, intentional community, John von Neumann, Loma Prieta earthquake, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, nocebo, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, publication bias, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social contagion, social distancing, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, trolley problem, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

The UN and the dispatching of multinational peacekeeping forces. International agreements to hinder trafficking of blood diamonds, elephant tusks, rhino horns, leopard skins, and humans. Agencies that collect money to aid disaster victims anywhere on the planet, that facilitate intercontinental adoption of orphans, that battle global pandemics and send medical personnel to any place of conflict. Yes, I know, I’m an utter naïf if I think laws are universally enforced. For example, in 1981 Mauritania became the last country to ban slavery; nevertheless, today roughly 20 percent of its people are slaves, and the government has prosecuted a total of one slave owner.1 I recognize that little has changed in many places; I have spent decades in Africa living around people who believe that epileptics are possessed and that the organs of murdered albinos have healing powers, where beating of wives, children, and animals is the norm, five-year-olds herd cattle and haul firewood, pubescent girls are clitoridectomized and given to old men as third wives.


pages: 932 words: 307,785

State of Emergency: The Way We Were by Dominic Sandbrook

anti-communist, Apollo 13, Arthur Marwick, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, Doomsday Book, edge city, estate planning, Etonian, falling living standards, fear of failure, Fellow of the Royal Society, feminist movement, financial thriller, first-past-the-post, fixed income, full employment, gentrification, German hyperinflation, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, mass immigration, meritocracy, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, North Sea oil, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, post-war consensus, sexual politics, traveling salesman, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Winter of Discontent, young professional

Only when she has begged the stone for forgiveness – and received by telepathy some home truths about man’s greed and pollution – is the terrible process reversed, the world apparently having been restored to ‘balance’ between nature and machine – although what that means is anybody’s guess.42 In April 1975, only a month after the conclusion of The Changes, the BBC showed the first episode of what would become the last word in eco-catastrophe dramas. Thanks to its terrifying global-pandemic opening, its earnest back-to-the-land message, its endless shots of Volvos trundling down country lanes, and its cast of balding men in parkas and feisty women in dungarees, Survivors captured the spirit of the mid-1970s better than almost any other cultural product of the day. It follows the adventures of three plucky survivors – Greg, an engineer, Abby, a middle-class housewife, and Jenny, a young secretary – in the aftermath of a devastating pandemic that has wiped out the vast majority of the world’s population.


pages: 1,199 words: 332,563

Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition by Robert N. Proctor

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", bioinformatics, carbon footprint, clean water, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, facts on the ground, friendly fire, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, index card, Indoor air pollution, information retrieval, invention of gunpowder, John Snow's cholera map, language of flowers, life extension, New Journalism, optical character recognition, pink-collar, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, publication bias, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, speech recognition, stem cell, telemarketer, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, Yogi Berra

Viewed from afar, one would almost think that cigarette makers have been granted a license to kill. 29 Globalizing Death Tobacco exports should be expanded aggressively because Americans are smoking less. DAN QUAYLE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 1990 We stand on the threshold of a global pandemic of tobacco-related diseases that is nothing short of colossal. ALLAN BRANDT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 2007 Humans are naturally inquisitive, and it would probably be hard to find an animal, vegetable, or mineral that has not, at some time or another, been put to the inhalation or ingestion test.


Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett

accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, biofilm, clean water, collective bargaining, contact tracing, desegregation, discovery of DNA, discovery of penicillin, disinformation, Drosophila, employer provided health coverage, Fall of the Berlin Wall, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Gregor Mendel, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, Induced demand, John Snow's cholera map, Jones Act, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mouse model, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuclear winter, Oklahoma City bombing, phenotype, profit motive, Project Plowshare, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, stem cell, the scientific method, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, working poor, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism

Examples of such lurking microbial threats, and humanity’s apparent impotence to deal with them, abounded at the millennium, the three most potentially catastrophic being HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. Combined in 1998 the three microbes claimed five million lives, according to the World Health Organization.97 HIV was, by the close of 1999, a lightning rod for protest against pharmaceutical companies, TRIPS, and global inequities in public health. The forecast for the future of the global pandemic was very, very grim. Already, according to the UNAIDS Programme, the virus’s impact on Africa was “catastrophic, and the scenario will only worsen unless global leaders work together to invest more—much more—in prevention efforts and programmes to address the multitude of social and economic problems that AIDS has wrought.”98 Experts envisioned nations obliterated by the world’s newest plague, held out little (if any) hope of a cure for the viral disease, and differed significantly at the end of the century only on one point: how many more decades would pass before an effective, affordable HIV vaccine could be used worldwide.