Monday morning news drop
Middle-Class Pay Lost Pace. Is Washington to Blame? One of the most urgent questions in economics is why pay for middle-income workers has increased only slightly since the 1970s, even as pay for those near the top has escalated. A new paper concludes that government is to blame: policymakers’ willingness to tolerate high unemployment; trade deals that force workers to compete with low-paid labor abroad; and new legal arrangements, like employment contracts that make it harder for workers to seek new jobs. (New York Times)
When Is the Revolution in Architecture Coming? Something is terribly wrong with architecture. Nearly everything being built is boring, joyless, and/or ugly, even though there is no reason it has to be. The architectural profession rewards work that is pretentious and bland. The cities we build are not wondrous. (Current Affairs)
The playoff upset that rattled a dynasty and put Gretzky's Oilers 'on the map' The Montreal Canadiens' most recent dynasty was crumbling when Glen Sather, head coach of the NHL's next big thing, pressed play on the video hype montage in 1981. Sather's Edmonton Oilers had seized control of their first-round, best-of-five playoff matchup with Montreal, the era's dominant team and a Stanley Cup favorite now facing elimination on the road. (Score)
What is economic growth? And why is it so important? Poverty, prosperity, and growth are often measured in monetary terms, most commonly as people’s income. But while monetary measures have some important advantages, they have the big disadvantage that they are abstract. In the worst case monetary measures – like GDP per capita – are so abstract that we forget what they are actually about: people’s access to goods and services. (Our World In Data)
Fed Officials Have Six Reasons to Bet Inflation Spike Will Pass Six reasons why Fed leaders are confident inflation pressures will be transitory: Inflation Expectations, Labor Slack, Sticky Prices, Disruptive Technology, Pricing Power & Base Effects (Bloomberg)
The Secret Origins of Amazon’s Alexa In 2011, Jeff Bezos dreamt up a talking device. But making the virtual assistant sound intelligent proved far more difficult than anyone could have imagined. The first-ever depiction of a device with Alexa—the artificially intelligent virtual assistant that Bezos would name after the ancient library of Alexandria—showed the speaker, a microphone, and a mute button. It wouldn’t be able to understand commands right out of the box, so the sketch identified the act of configuring the device to a wireless network as a challenge requiring further thought. (Wired)
Taibbi: On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez It is much easier to ruin a career than mess with a corporate cash cow (TK News)
How the Personal Computer Broke the Human Body There was really no precedent in our history of media interaction for what the combination of sitting and looking at a computer monitor did to the human body. Unlike television viewing, which is done at greater distance and lacks interaction, monitor use requires a short depth of field and repetitive eye motions. (Vice)
Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows: The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about Covid vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months. (NPR)