Knowledge@Wharton – “In the Great Recession, the two key tools for rescuing the economy — fiscal and monetary policy — had big limitations, according to Yair Listokin, author of a new book: Law and Macroeconomics: Legal Remedies to Recessions. The big increases in government spending needed to get the economy cooking again were mostly a… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: April 2019
Obama’s Presidential Library Is Already Digital
The Atlantic – The question now is how to leverage its nature to make it maximally useful and used…”The debate about the Obama library exhibits a fundamental confusion. Given its origins and composition, the Obama library is already largely digital. The vast majority of the record his presidency left behind consists not of evocative handwritten… Continue Reading
Transparency tool on FB inadvertently provides window into confusing maze of companies who have your data
BuzzFeedNews – “On Facebook under Settings, there’s a page in the Ads section where you can view your Ad Preferences. Most of this is fairly straightforward — choices about how you’ll allow ads and how advertisers target you based on things like what pages you’ve liked. But there’s one section there that will probably surprise… Continue Reading
This tech tells cities when floods are coming and what they will destroy
“…One Concern debuted Flood Concern in late 2018. It creates map-based visualizations of where water surges may hit hardest, up to five days ahead of an impending storm. For cities, that includes not just time-lapse breakdowns of how the water will rise, how fast it could move, and what direction it will be flowing, but… Continue Reading
To Purge Some of Social Media’s Ugliness, an Unlikely Lesson From Wall St.
The New York Times Deal Book – A simple rule that bolsters the banking system – “know your customer” — could help combat fake news and hate speech online if companies like Facebook and Twitter embraced it. “…The concept is “know your customer” — or KYC, as it’s called on Wall Street — and it’s… Continue Reading
Lifting Journalism by Knowing What Readers Are Looking For
The New York Times: “Claudio E. Cabrera, who specializes in search engine optimization, describes how he keeps track of what’s hot in search and how that informs coverage — and what the limits are…How do you keep track of search trends? A lot of it really starts with taking a dive into the journalism your… Continue Reading
Trump moving to dismantle OPM
Washington Post: “If the Trump administration succeeds at dismantling the Office of Personnel Management, the closure could be a blueprint for shuttering other departments as it tries to shrink government….The agency would be pulled apart and its functions divided among three other departments. An executive order directing parts of the transition by the fall is… Continue Reading
OECD – Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class
“Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class: “Middle-class households feel left behind and have questioned the benefits of economic globalisation. In many OECD countries, middle incomes have grown less than the average and in some they have not grown at all. Technology has automated several middle-skilled jobs that used to be carried out by middle-class workers… Continue Reading
New privacy assistant Jumbo fixes your Facebook & Twitter settings
So now we need an app to fix our apps. Ok – here is the latest via TechCrunch: “Jumbo could be a nightmare for the tech giants, but a savior for the victims of their shady privacy practices. Jumbo saves you hours as well as embarrassment by automatically adjusting 30 Facebook privacy settings to give… Continue Reading
2019 Pulitzer Preview: Not all, but many, winners may be about the president
Poynter: “As the Pulitzer Prize Board prepares to select its slate of 2019 winners to announce next week, likely little time will be spent reacting to presidential tweets — such as the March 29 one that urged the board to invalidate last year’s National Reporting prizes to the Washington Post and New York Times. “There… Continue Reading
National Archives Backtracks on Records Purge
DCReport – Move Comes After Outcry Over Planned Destruction of Interior Department Documents – “The National Archives is changing the way it decides what records to destroy after an outcry about proposed mass destruction of records at the Interior Department. The change follows a campaign by writer Russ Kick whose website, AltGov 2, features government… Continue Reading
Study – Phone Addicts are the New Drunk Drivers
Zendrive: “…Last year, 6,227 pedestrians lost their lives to the hands of drivers who were most likely driving under the influence of a smartphone. On a national level, drivers are 10 percent more distracted this year than last. And from out under the shadows, Phone Addicts have positioned themselves as public enemy number one, replacing… Continue Reading
