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Category Archives: Economy

Retail Might Be Struggling, But the Rich Are Buying Rare Books

Bloomberg via MSN: “Even as independent bookstores struggle to survive, rare books and manuscripts have proven a rare bright spot in the industry. “It’s almost like two businesses,” says Kenneth Gloss, the owner of Brattle Book Shop in Boston. “As far as the general used-book business, it’s been off.” His third floor of rare and antiquarian… Continue Reading

Student Loan Bill Tracking Database

National Conference of State Legislatures – This interactive database tracks state legislation related to student loan debt across several categories, including forgiveness, licensure, oversight and taxes. It includes pending, failed and enacted bills since 2015. The database can be searched by category, year or state. The database is updated monthly with bills identified by NCSL staff…” Continue Reading

Growing Discomfort at Law Firms Representing Trump in Election Lawsuits

The New York Times via MSN – “There was Big Tobacco. There was the Bin Laden family. There was even the hated owner of the Cleveland Browns football team as he moved the franchise to Baltimore. Now Jones Day is the most prominent firm representing President Trump and the Republican Party as they prepare to… Continue Reading

Covid Superspreader Risk Is Linked to Restaurants, Gyms, Hotels

Nature – “How to stop restaurants from driving COVID infections – US mobile data suggests restaurants, gyms and cafes can be covid hotspots — and reveals strategies for limiting spread. In cities worldwide, coronavirus outbreaks have been linked to restaurants, cafes and gyms. Now, a new model using mobile-phone data to map people’s movements suggests… Continue Reading

Biden may have trouble unearthing Trump’s national security secrets

Politico: “From tearing up documents and hiding transcripts of calls with foreign leaders to using encrypted messaging apps and personal email accounts for government business, the Trump White House’s skirting of records preservation rules could limit the incoming Biden administration’s visibility into highly sensitive foreign policy and national security secrets….The Presidential Records Act, which requires… Continue Reading

Can you trust that Amazon review? 42% may be fake, independent monitor says.

Chicago Tribune – “Fake reviews on Amazon.com during the pandemic have reached levels typically seen during the holiday shopping season. About 42% of 720 million Amazon reviews assessed by the monitoring service Fakespot from March through September were unreliable, up from about 36% for the same period last year. The rise in fake reviews corresponded… Continue Reading

Biden Could Roll Back Trump Agenda With Blitz of Executive Actions

The New York Times – “President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is poised to unleash a series of executive actions on his first day in the Oval Office, prompting what is likely to be a yearslong effort to unwind President Trump’s domestic agenda and immediately signal a wholesale shift in the United States’ place in the… Continue Reading

Dan’s COVID Charts since June by state partisanship

Dan’s COVID Charts – Created by Dan Goodspeed using data from New York Times and visualization help from Flourish.  “The numbers are the total confirmed normalized cases per million for each state since June. A ‘10,000’ means 1% of the state’s population has tested positive of COVID since June 1. June 1 was chosen as… Continue Reading

Communicating Through a Crisis

Insider Higher Ed – “Most research in crisis communications and management is retrospective, looking at how things unfolded, said Brooke Fisher Liu, a professor of communications and associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Maryland at College Park. Most research in the field also focuses on corporations and governments, rather than other… Continue Reading

In hunt for virus source W.H.O. let China take charge

The New York Times: “…Nine months and more than 1.1 million deaths later, there is still no transparent, independent investigation into the source of the virus. Notoriously allergic to outside scrutiny, China has impeded the effort, while leaders of the World Health Organization, if privately frustrated, have largely ceded control, even as the Trump administration… Continue Reading

Phone and email scammers have pivoted during the pandemic

Washington Post – Here’s how to protect yourself. “If there has been any upside to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s that robocalls practically stopped for a time. Unfortunately, the ringing has returned. On average, the American public fields about 5 billion spam calls per month, according to call-blocker app RoboKiller. However, the company noticed a 40 percent drop… Continue Reading