First up–exciting news at Team HtU. Thanks to some fundraising success, we’re finally going to be a real team (no longer a team of one). I’m very excited to announce that Wyatt Closs & Douglas Williams have agreed to start doing some writing for this blog. See more about the two of them here. Look for additional content from them, in the coming weeks.
Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability
Some folks who are trying to spread co-working in NYC came up with this innovative idea—why not co-work at the Met? or a wine bar? (that last one would not be conducive to my own personal productivity, but YMMV).
If you’re using your personal car to operate as a Lyft driver, you might find that your personal car insurance isn’t willing to cover you, if you get in an accident. Commercial insurance may be financially out of reach for folks who are only driving once or twice a week. Will something fill the gap?
Interested in the history of Britain’s co-ops? This archive’s got you covered.
Reputation, Reputation, Reputation
Don’t want Google Glass to record your every trip to the bathroom? You may be in luck.
You probably don’t have a great understanding of how your credit score gets determined. What kind of regulation do we need, if we’re about to adopt even more kinds of biased, algorithmic scoring?
Do you need to figure out if breaking news is real or manufactured? Check out this how-to manual for journalists and others.
From Partners
Friend-o-the-blog Andrew Brady from global solidarity network USi Live is coming to the Eastern Seaboard in late March, to build relationships with US unions. If you want to meet him in Philly, check out this event. And follow Organizing 2.0 on FB for info about when he’ll be in NYC.
Did you know that corporate America gets bigger tax breaks if they pay their CEOs more? Seems perverse. Rep. Lloyd Doggett & Sens. Reed & Blumenthal are working on a fix.
Geeking Out
“We have to do things that cannot be tackled by apps.” What are the political consequences of embracing an app-based solutionist culture? Evgeny Morozov opines that we’re outsourcing, to corporations, solutions we used to expect from government. Bonus quote? “We should throw out venture capitalists.”
Not only do androids dream of electric sheep, they now appear to be able to write the modern day version of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”
What’s Going On in the Workforce?
Interested in what it’s like to start a worker-owned co-op? Here’s a great series of first-person blog posts from a guy who’s working with others to do that.
I’m guessing it takes a special kind of person to eat for three hours a day in front of a web cam. But for $9K US a month, people will do special things.
Distributed workplaces are complicated. Imagine what it’s like to lay off people in large groups when they’re scattered across the country? Now listen to this phone call, where someone from Patch actually does that. Then, go take a shower, as I guarantee you will feel dirty.
Foxconn is building a factory in the US. Think that means good news for US workers? Think again. US robots, on the other hand? It’s good news for you. Google’s purchase of AI company DeepMind has this Oxford University professor worried we ALL may be losing our jobs sooner than we think.
As a single mom with two kids who lives in the Philly metro area, I’d need to work 147 hours a week at Wal-Mart to make a secure living. Wanna know what you’d need to earn?