News You Can Use: 11/27/2019


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  • Can America ever rebuild its neighborhoods and communities?

    Across the country, Marohn sees evidence of what he dubs a “Municipal Ponzi scheme.” Cities — armed with economic development dollars and consultants galore — focus their energies and budgets on new housing subdivisions as well as far-flung, auto-dependent office parks and strip malls, all the while ignoring the long-term debt, maintenance costs, and municipal burdens they are transferring to future generations of residents. “The growth creates an illusion of wealth, a broad, cultural misperception that the growing community is become [sic] stronger and more prosperous. Instead, with each new development, they become increasingly more insolvent,” the author writes.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/09/can-america-ever-rebuild-its-neighborhoods-and-communities/

  • How a few flaky elevator buttons are tearing our office apart

    Shout out to my crew in Philly who have to deal with out terrible elevator experience.
  • New Study Debunks Age Bias in the Workplace. What Does That Mean for Your Business?

    The Addison Group survey found that 45 percent of respondents believe millennials receive preferential treatment at work. That’s still a significant number, despite the fact that the majority of people say preferential treatment isn’t happening. However, it doesn’t eliminate valid concerns that older generations might have about being replaced. I have heard that concern voiced time and again, and have been in roles where I’m even a bit nervous about being replaced by someone younger. A workplace where older employees think the younger ones are being favored can turn toxic quickly.

    In the research, 49 percent of respondents said millennials are the largest segment of their workplace, compared to 43 percent who said it was Gen X. Given the large numbers of millennials in the workforce, older generations might suppose that each new company initiative or process is targeted at appeasing those younger workers.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/341761

News You Can Use: 2/13/2019

  • Your Company Wants to Know if You’ve Lost Weight

    Disney , Whole Foods and dozens of other companies have introduced programs to reward employees for meeting certain criteria on health indicators such as weight-to-height ratio and blood pressure. Some incentivize workers to hit a target number of step counts and eat well: One wellness provider, Vitality, works with 31,000 grocery stores to analyze participants’ food choices and award points for healthy purchases, which can be redeemed for prizes.
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    In addition to tests measuring indicators like blood pressure, wellness programs often involve taking detailed online health assessments that can include questions on alcohol consumption and pregnancy plans. Many programs employ wearable devices that track step counts, sleep and heart rates. Some privacy experts fear that by opting in, individuals may put their data at risk. Wellness programs that are run as part of group health plans are covered by HIPAA, the nation’s main health-privacy law. However, many others aren’t, leaving protection for employee data more porous, said Joy Pritts, who served as chief privacy officer at the Department of Health and Human Services until 2014.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-your-company-need-to-know-your-body-mass-index-11549902536?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • How to Get Better at Small Talk

    As Quartz mentioned, there’s the “triangulation” approach to small talk (named by Kio Stark, author of When Strangers Meet). This method involves three points: you, your partner, and the observable thing in front of you—in other words, your common ground.

    It’s simple. Find the thing that ties you together and bond over it, even if it’s right in front of your eyes. The weather’s terrible! I can’t wait for lunch! Not again, Trump!

    https://lifehacker.com/how-to-make-better-small-talk-1832124157

  • Returning to the town that Walmart left behind
  • We Need a Radical New Way to Understand Screen Use

    The cruel irony, from a social scientist’s perspective, is that much of the data we seek (more, in fact, than has existed at any point in history) already exists on the servers of Facebook, Google, and several more of the most powerful companies on earth. Those corporations are the gatekeepers that hold researchers back from asking more urgent and incisive questions. For example: When college freshmen with depressive symptoms open YouTube, what do they watch? For how long? What does YouTube recommend them when they’re done, and what do they watch next?

    Researchers would give almost anything to make these observations, because it would allow them to begin untangling the web of causes and correlations that bind our thoughts, behaviors, and development to our increasingly connected ways of being in the world.

    https://www.wired.com/story/we-need-a-radical-new-way-to-understand-screen-use/

  • I Studied Buttons for 7 Years and Learned These 5 Lessons About How and Why People Push Them

    Yet in many contexts, both past and present, buttons are anything but easy. Have you ever stood in an elevator pushing the close-door button over and over, hoping and wondering if the door will ever shut? The same quandary presents itself at every crosswalk button. Programming a so-called “universal remote” is often an exercise in extreme frustration. Now think about the intensely complex dashboards used by pilots or DJs.

    For more than a century, people have been complaining that buttons aren’t easy: Like any technology, most buttons require training to understand how and when to use them.W

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pand5v/power-button-politics-of-pushing-buttons

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