Afternoon Tea 3.27.24 - When Dali Hit the Bridge
Squatter Hysteria, neo-SROs, and Full Precinct Suspension
A ship named Dali destroyed a bridge in Baltimore. If you had that on your 2024 Event Bingo Card come on up, your prize is a male calico mix. The cat isn’t photoshopped, he’s just a very annoyed treasure.
A small town suspended its entire police force. Residents want to know why (AP) The entire police force in Ridgely, MD has been suspended. They’re not saying why, so the residents are just emoting “!?!??” at scale.
San Diego ambulance takeover yields faster response times (San Diego Union-Tribune) San Diego brought their emergency response labor back in house, dropping those lame contracted ambulance services, and guess what happened? Faster, more effective service, at a cheaper price. Shocking right?
Inside the squatting hysteria (Popular Info) & In Pricey Silicon Valley, a Plan to Preempt Homelessness (Bloomberg CityLab) & Revealed: a California city is training AI to spot homeless encampments (Guardian) If you’re seeing stories about squatting, it’s because of the insane real estate lobbying effort to change the squatting laws in NYC. On the other side of the country, Cali is both successfully using Universal Basic Income to pre-empt homelessness, and using AI to “spot” the homeless. Truly the best & worst of times.
FTC Releases Report on Grocery Supply Chain Disruptions (FTC) & Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions (NYTimes) Did we say it was exploitative BS? Yes. Did it turn out to be exploitative BS? Of course.
How we got here (Garbage Day) Your Kate Middleton photoshop explainer, with a bonus quote that I think encapsulates the moment perfectly:
But this is also just how our various institutions work — or more accurately do not work — now. Over the last 25 years we have slowly uploaded every part of our lives to a system of platforms run by algorithms that make money off our worst impulses. Well, the ones brands are comfortable advertising around. And for years we have wondered what the world might look like when we crossed the threshold into a fully online world. Well, we did. We crossed it. This is what it looks like. And it is already too vast and complicated and all-encompassing to blame any one individual for how it functions. If we want something new, we'd have to smash the whole thing and I don't think that's going to happen. So let's hope PR people, at the very least, can figure out how to deal with it going forward.
Five of this year’s Pulitzer finalists are AI-powered (Nieman Lab) Sigh, expect more of this, but we don’t have to like it.
Micro-apartments': A low-cost housing concept from the 1900s reappears (AP) Single-room occupancy housing, living at the YMCA, renting a room for a month, lots of names for this. But those names would imply a step back in time, and in wealth for millions of Americans. So, it’s better frame them as “micro-apartments” instead of SROs. This way people will think you’re referring to capsule apartments in San Francisco, not housing options where your bathroom is in the hallway.
Hungary’s government rocked as former insider leaks recordings
(AJZ) & Make America Hungary Again (Don Moynihan) If you’re looking to Hungary for as an autocratic model the USA should steal, you should sit down and examine where your life went wrong. Your kids would love to speak to you, but not if you keep thinking “being against stuff” is a coherent political ideology.
If you watched certain YouTube videos, investigators demanded your data from Google (Mashable) & Google Ordered To Identify Who Watched Certain YouTube Videos (Forbes) Google is working with the federal government in new & innovative ways. Not good ways, just innovative ones.
Playground bullies do prosper, and go on to earn more in middle age (The Guardian) Playground bullies turn into aggressive sales people and corporate overlords who have trouble with the concepts of consent and insider trading. The behavior is either snuffed out, or their humanity is.
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