A fight you cannot win // What's Good: Jun. 16, 2023
Strikes, self-owns, and selling out.
Hello, good evening, happy Friday. This week the man who runs Reddit decided to start a war against the army of people who prop up his company with their free labor. I do not think he understands what the consequences of that will be in the long run (things like massive losses in value for the company), but one of the immediate consequences was that Reddit itself became fundamentally unusable on Tuesday as moderators flipped their communities to be private in protest of pending changes.
But we’ll get to that.
Bad influence
Right, of course, this checks out:
Twitter owner Elon Musk may have had an influence on Reddit’s CEO ahead of changes to the website that have resulted in a user-led rebellion on the platform.
In an interview Thursday with NBC News, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman praised Musk’s aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter, and said he had chatted “a handful of times” with Musk on the subject of running an internet platform.
Huffman said he saw Musk’s handling of Twitter, which he purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.
As a reminder, Twitter was recently valued at 33% of what Musk paid for it. So.
What’s in a name
Somehow I do not think this will pass muster:
Yesterday, drivers for one of Amazon’s delivery service partners in California went on strike to protest Amazon refusing to bargain a contract with them. These drivers, who unionized with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in late April, are the first drivers within Amazon to go on strike in the U.S.
Motherboard covered this story with the headline, “Amazon Delivery Drivers Walk Out in First-Ever Driver Strike.” This makes sense, given that it is what happened. Delivery drivers who work at an Amazon facility, deliver Amazon packages, and typically drive Amazon-branded trucks, walked out of their Amazon facility. Amazon, however, contests this point.
As a spokesperson for the company wrote in an email to Motherboard: these drivers are not Amazon drivers, actually, but drivers who deliver for Amazon, which is a very critical factual difference.
I suspect the NLRB will have some opinions about this position!
Jammed
Traffic is what you make it:
Road development throughout the 20th century was based primarily on the premise that more infrastructure eases traffic. But evidence shows that road building, instead of reducing congestion, actually increases traffic. When travel time by car is reduced and convenience increased, coupled with the appeal of the private vehicle as a continued indicator of wealth and standing, people are inclined to make more car trips. A recent working paper by researchers from the University of Barcelona, using data from 545 European cities from 1985-2005, confirms that capacity expansion efforts over two decades led to more vehicle traffic, not less, and congestion was not relieved.
A reverse effect to traffic generation is the phenomenon of “traffic evaporation”: traffic that disappears when road space is reallocated from private vehicles to more sustainable modes of transport like walking, cycling and public transportation. While traffic evaporation has been well-documented for more than 20 years, most decision- and opinion-makers are still under the impression that reducing car lanes will make traffic worse.
Not exactly breadcrumbs
You’re gonna want to click this one, I promise:
The Utah woman accused of killing her husband by poisoning him with a spiked drink — then writing a children's book about grief — allegedly searched for lethal doses of fentanyl, life insurance payouts and lie detector tests on her iPhone, according to a court filing.
Prosecutors urged the court Friday to deny bail to Kouri Richins, cited alleged internet searches from her in the filing that included:
Fearmongering meets reality
Things are getting better, actually:
Official crime statistics are only released after a substantial delay, so for nearly a decade I’ve collected and compiled big-city crime data as a way to assemble a more real-time picture of national murder trends. And this spring, I’ve found something that I’ve never seen before and that probably has not happened in decades: strong evidence of a sharp and broad decline in the nation’s murder rate.
The United States may be experiencing one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded, according to my preliminary data. It is still early in the year and the trend could change over the second half of the year, but data from a sufficiently large sample of big cities have typically been a good predictor of the year-end national change in murder, even after only five months.
The price of your soul
Selling out isn’t always a happy ending:
To understand the excitement surrounding the launch of Platform Beer a decade ago, it’s helpful to appreciate the local craft brewing scene that existed at the time. In terms of breweries in Cleveland, there was only Great Lakes, Market Garden, Nano Brew, Portside Brewery and tiny Indigo Imp. A beer lover would have to cross city lines to enjoy the likes of Fat Head’s, BottleHouse, Brew Kettle and a small handful of others.
“Back then, the landscape of the brewery situation in Cleveland was totally different, where any place opening was a big, exciting deal,” recalls Leslie Basalla-McCafferty, who operated brewery tours under the name Brew Bus. “So, here’s a new place opening in Ohio City – a part of Ohio City that was, at the time, neglected. It was really exciting.”
You deserve some good animal content
https://twitter.com/RedPandaEveryHr/status/1669913348970872836
https://twitter.com/twperritos/status/1669900728167481368
https://twitter.com/twperritos/status/1669890225349206033
https://twitter.com/shouldhaveanima/status/1669888143187935232
https://twitter.com/ServalEveryHr/status/1669883157842108416
https://twitter.com/twperritos/status/1669880991542829058
https://twitter.com/m_crouton/status/1669105577362857985
https://twitter.com/OregonZoo/status/1669734740222685184
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
Car-Rental Companies Are Ruining EVs. The Dad Canon. Why It Matters Who Caused Inflation. Texas Gov. Abbott signs law shutting diversity offices at public universities. 10-Year-Old’s Stand on Racism Stuns Oregon City Council Meeting. Daniel Ellsberg, Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Is Dead at 92. How many people are watching Tucker Carlson’s new show on Twitter?