August 29, 2023

📡 – 2023-08-25 (observed)

Apologies for the tardiness! But of course I would not abandon you! Right to it:

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👆 Remaster / rerelease of a classic banger. Highly, highly recommended if you’re unfamiliar.

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Unions are key to reversing stagnant wages and economic inequality, Treasury Department says in first-of-its-kind report

Unions are key to reversing stagnant wages and inequality: Treasury Department - MarketWatch

"These findings challenge arguments that unions hold back growth," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a news conference with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Unions benefit the middle class in that they raise members’ wages by 10% to 15%, according to the report, which also said that unions help to improve wages and benefits of nonunion workers, affecting the wellbeing of many families and communities. All of that chips away at inequality, including racial and gender wage gaps, the report said.

“Today’s unions benefit all demographic groups,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a call with reporters Monday. “Black men, who have the highest union-membership rates of any demographic groups [13%, vs. 10.1% overall], have also been particularly hit by the trends experienced by the middle class as a whole. They therefore may be particularly poised to benefit from unionization.”

The End of the Googleverse

How Google made the world go viral - The Verge

The last 25 years of Google’s history can be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb. Is the search engine finally losing to its hijackers?

Discoverability of the open web has suffered. Pinterest has been accused of eating Google Image Search results. And the recent protests over third-party API access at Reddit revealed how popular Google has become as a search engine not for Google’s results but for Reddit content. Google’s place in the hierarchy of Big Tech is slipping enough that some are even admitting that Apple Maps is worth giving another chance, something unthinkable even a few years ago.

Online Ratings Are Broken

Online Ratings Are Broken - The Atlantic

Companies aren’t asking for your feedback. They’re begging you for data.

Friends, family, and colleagues report similar distress. After a doctor’s visit, one of them got bombarded with demands to review and rate the practice. He finally gave in and left a negative review—partly because it seemed like the office spent more time haranguing him for feedback than providing useful medical advice. Another reported a local market’s incessant demands that she review a nonalcoholic aperitif she once sampled and had utterly forgotten about.

This phenomenon has become so common as to swell into malaise. Data panhandling, let’s call it: a constant, unwelcome, and invasive demand that you provide feedback about everything, all the time. Each “request” is really just begging, an appeal for a favor without any expectation of benefit or reciprocity.

Buyers of Bored Ape NFTs sue after digital apes turn out to be bad investment

"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for BAYC NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the lawsuit claimed. Lawsuit plaintiffs say that harmed investors bought the NFTs "with a reasonable expectation of profit from owning them."

Sotheby's sold a lot of 101 Bored Ape NFTs for $24.4 million at its "Ape In!" auction in September 2021, well above the pre-auction estimates of $12 million to $18 million. That's an average price of over $241,000, but Bored Ape NFTs now sell for a floor price of about $50,000 worth of ether cryptocrurrency, according to CoinGecko data accessed today.

When did animals start communicating using sound, and why?

When did animals start communicating using sound, and why? - ABC News

Wind back the clock a few hundred million years, and landscapes were completely silent of any truly meaningful communication through sound. So when did animals first find their voice, so to speak, and why?

The trait probably first popped up in nocturnal animals, which makes sense, because if it's too dark to be seen by potential lovers, you may as well be heard.

Of the land-dwelling vertebrates, frogs and mammals were probably first to get their intra-species chat on — around 200 million years ago at the start of the Jurassic.

Spotify Looked to Ban White Noise Podcasts to Become More Profitable

White Noise Podcasters Are Costing Spotify $38 Million a Year - Bloomberg

An internal document shows that white noise podcasts account for 3 million daily consumption hours on the platform

As of January, according to an internal document Bloomberg viewed, white noise and ambient podcasts accounted for 3 million daily consumption hours on the platform, inadvertently boosted by Spotify’s own algorithmic push for “talk” content (versus music).

Once Spotify realized how much attention was going to white noise podcasts, the company considered removing these shows from the talk feed and prohibiting future uploads while redirecting the audience towards comparable programming that was more economical for Spotify — doing so, according to the document, would boost Spotify’s annual gross profit by €35 million, or $38 million.

Board Issues Decision Announcing New Framework for Union Representation Proceedings

Board Issues Decision Announcing New Framework for Union Representation Proceedings | National Labor Relations Board

Today, the Board issued a decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC announcing a new framework for determining when employers are required to bargain with unions without a representation election.  The new framework will both effectuate employees’ right to bargain through representatives of their own choosing and improve the fairness and integrity of Board-conducted elections.

Today, the Board issued a decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC announcing a new framework for determining when employers are required to bargain with unions without a representation election.  The new framework will both effectuate employees’ right to bargain through representatives of their own choosing and improve the fairness and integrity of Board-conducted elections.

Under the new framework, when a union requests recognition on the basis that a majority of employees in an appropriate bargaining unit have designated the union as their representative, an employer must either recognize and bargain with the union or promptly file an RM petition seeking an election.  However, if an employer who seeks an election commits any unfair labor practice that would require setting aside the election, the petition will be dismissed, and—rather than re-running the election—the Board will order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union. 

Browsing the Aisles or Browsing the App? How Online Grocery Shopping is Changing What We Buy

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3992849

This paper investigates the systematic differences between online and offline grocery shopping baskets using data from approximately two million brick-and-mortar and Instacart trips. We apply unsupervised machine learning algorithms agnostic to the shopping channel to identify what constitutes a typical food shopping trip for each household. We find that food shopping basket variety is significantly lower for online shopping trips, as measured by the number of unique food categories and items purchased. Within a given household, the Instacart baskets are more similar to each other as compared to offline baskets, with twice as many overlapping items between successive trips to the same retailer. These results suggest a potential link between online grocery shopping environments and heightened consumer inertia, which may lead to stronger brand loyalty and pose challenges for new entrants in establishing a customer base. Furthermore, Instacart baskets have 13% fewer fresh vegetables and 5-7% fewer impulse purchases, such as candy, bakery desserts, and savory snacks, which are not compensated for by alternative or additional shopping trips. We discuss the implications of these systematic shopping basket differences for competition, product management, retailers, consumers, and online platforms.

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I have been watching a LOT of YouTube for a large research project, and so my recommendeds are a complete mess. Lo, then, this 1.5hr ETTV video “about” teppanyaki cooking. HELL YES. Brain scrub. Timeline cleanse. Etc.

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Do I have time to play video games? No! Are Molly and I slowly working our way through BG3 anyway? YES! Am I having a blast? SORT OF! I’ve found the overall feel of it pretty janky, and … with a sole exception … find pretty much all of the Origins™ characters rather irritating? But hey, I guess that means it does accurately capture the experience of playing dnd.

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New episode of RIP Corp. out a couple weeks ago: an explainer of Corporate Personhood! It’s a real good one. Grab it wherever you grab audio things, or here.

I was also very lucky to be asked to be a guest on Tell Me About It, made by Eric Silver and Adal Rafai.

Tell Me About It is a madcap game show about proving that the things you like are actually interesting and cool. Adal Rifai is an eccentric billionaire who forces someone new every episode to share, argue, and defend the thing they love the most. He’s wrangled his audio butler Eric to lead the contestant through a series of absurd challenges and games, all to gain points and get on the Most Interesting Thing High Score Board.

In case it wasn’t glaringly obvious (it is) I was on to make a case for … synthesizers 🎹 🎛️ ⚡️ 🔌 🎚️ Listen also wherever you get pods and here on Spotify.

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That’s what I got and it’s all that I got! I hope you had a nice weekend, and a good start to your week, and that – if that was the case – the trend continues.

Say hey however you can and want and in the meantime, if you liked this here little newsletter, consider tellin’ your pals about it, yeah?

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