It started as a murmur of dissent, but over the weekend the campaign to persuade brands to boycott Facebook ads for the month of July turned into a major crisis for the social media giant. It began badly on Friday when Unilever, one of the world’s biggest advertisers, announced it was joining the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which had already been backed by Verizon, Patagonia, and Ben and Jerry’s.
Shortly after my region ended their lockdown, I went to my local Walmart to return something I had purchased online. I was shocked that more than half of the people there weren’t wearing masks. I got in and out quickly, wondering all the while whether the chance to get infected was really worth the $22 bucks I had coming to me for returning a defective rechargeable LED utility light. When…
In June, 2000, I was blogging about Poems inspired by anagrams (T.S. Eliot = Toilets; Emily Dickinson = Skinny Domicile) Where to go if you wanted to know what was happening In 1750 Paris The Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations A patent lawsuit that claimed ownership of the concept of hyperlinks Reading posture (how do we shape our bodies when we read?)
Since new technical skills are always in high demand, young college graduates who have them earn a short-run salary premium. Yet when the job changes, these now experienced workers must learn new technical skills to keep up with fresh college graduates and a constant stream of talent from abroad. The result is slower salary growth and high exit rates from the STEM work force. Between the ages of 25 and…
Microsoft is laying off dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations. The layoffs are part of a bigger push by Microsoft to rely on artificial intelligence to pick news and content that’s presented on MSN.com, inside Microsoft’s Edge browser, and in the company’s various Microsoft News apps. Many of the affected workers are part of Microsoft’s SANE (search, ads, News, Edge) division, and are contracted as human editors to help pick stories. Robots will now pick news stories for MSN and Microsoft News.