Category: links_read

“Video-Game Companies Make Workers Relocate, Then Fire Them” – Jason Schreier (GameOn, Bloomberg)

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“Blizzard canceled its survival game Odyssey after six years in development largely due to its struggling technology. One factor behind those struggles may have been the company’s inability to retain or attract senior engineers, in part, because of a lack of remote-work flexibility.

But the hardest impact of this policy is that both companies asked people to move to southern California — where the rents are expensive and the cost of living is high — only to then take away their jobs.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that productivity does take a hit when people work from home. Maybe it’s especially hard for some disciplines, as managers have argued, and maybe it’s difficult to engage in creative collaboration on Zoom and Trello. Doesn’t matter. CEOs should recognize that no productivity boost is worth the short- and long-term repercussions of forcing people to move and then laying them off”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-26/video-game-companies-make-workers-relocate-then-fire-them

“Out of Stock – Instacart, Elon Musk, Cruises, and Crabs” – A Scammer Darkly

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“Instacart lost two billion dollars last quarter, which somehow beat Wall Street expectations. The markets have decided that gig grocery delivery is something society needs so badly it’s worth blowing billions and grinding a dwindling independent workforce into dust to make it happen”

https://newsletter.scammerdarkly.com/archive/out-of-stock-instacart-elon-musk-cruises-and-crabs/

“I hated going back to games – until The Last of Us Part II Remastered came along” – Keith Stuart (Pushing Buttons, Guardian)

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“Replaying a linear narrative game is like rereading a favourite novel: nothing changes apart from you. The way you feel, the age you are, the experiences you’ve had – these all contribute to your new experiences with the text. Vladimir Nabokov once said, “One cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” Perhaps we should think about linear narrative games in the same way.

Now that I’ve opened this experiential door, I will definitely keep it ajar. I guess movies and short novels are easier to re-experience thanks to their comparative brevity, but if we look at story games as an escape, a vacation from the new, they’re always worth revisiting. And they have things to tell us about ourselves”

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/jan/24/pushing-buttons-last-of-us-2-remastered-replaying

“January 24, 2024” – Letters from an American

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“In his resignation letter, DeWit claimed the recording had been “taken out of context” and said he had been “set up.” He noted that Lake has “a disturbing tendency to exploit private interactions for personal gain,” calling out “her habit of secretly recording personal and private conversations. This is obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including President Trump,” he added. “I believe she orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party,” he wrote.

DeWit said he had “received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording. I am truly unsure of its contents,” he wrote, “but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk. I am resigning as Lake requested.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-24-2024

“The libertarian developer looming over West Maui’s water conflict” – Anita Hofschneider & Jake Bittle (Grist)

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“Tremble’s letter implied that a state official key to implementing local water regulations — and the first Native Hawaiian to lead the state water commission — had impeded firefighting efforts. He soon walked back the claim, but his first letter had immediate effect. The state attorney general launched an investigation into the official, the governor suspended water regulations, and the official was temporarily reassigned. Critics saw it as an attempt to capitalize on the grief of the community for profit”

https://grist.org/indigenous/developer-peter-martin-west-maui-water-wildfire/

“The Secrets of the JFK Assassination Archive” – Scott Sayare (Intelligencer)

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“In 1979, after a thoroughgoing reinvestigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations officially concluded that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” But such findings seemed not to penetrate. “In view of the overwhelming evidence that Oswald could not have acted alone (if he acted at all), the most remarkable feature of the assassination is not the abundance of conspiracy theories,” Christopher Lasch, the historian and social critic, remarked in Harper’s, “but the rejection of a conspiracy theory by the ‘best and brightest.’” For complex reasons of history, psychology, and politics, within the American Establishment it remained inadvisable to speak of conspiracy unless you did not mind being labeled a kook”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jfk-assassination-documents-national-archives.html

“Unleash the bololô” – Laís Martins (restofworld)

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“Named after the sound of a revving motorbike, these bololô protests have become a common tactic for delivery drivers in Brazil. Often, they’re used as a response to physical threats or racist attacks on the workers. Because drivers have little recourse for nasty customers on the apps that employ them, the bololô has become both a last resort and a rallying cry, drawing together drivers in a noisy show of solidarity”

https://restofworld.org/2023/bololo-delivery-workers-fireworks-horns-protest/

“What Does “Defence” Really Mean?” – Samia Madwar (The Walrus)

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“Defence” is not supposed to be about seeking justice from your enemy,” says Colleen Bell, an international relations scholar at the University of Saskatchewan. Yet that’s how the concept is largely perceived. Many have rightly questioned how many Palestinians Israel needs to kill before it feels it’s sufficiently defended itself. While international humanitarian law dictates that defensive strikes must not disproportionately harm civilians, there are no legal precedents that specify what is considered proportionate”

https://thewalrus.ca/what-does-defence-really-mean/

“How the Winklevii’s Second Act Went Bad” – Kevin T. Dugan (Intelligencer)

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“It was an aggressive move to offer the general public a brand new interest-bearing product without clear regulatory approval — and this time Gemini didn’t ask the Department of Financial Services for permission ahead of time, according to two people familiar with the approval process. To knowledgeable observers in the crypto world, the logic of the Winklevosses’ strategy shift toward riskier and more aggressive product offerings was obvious enough. “They were hemorrhaging market share,” said Cory Klippsten, the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, a digital currency financial services company. “In an effort to stay alive, they basically did exactly what SBF did, which was go after retail deposits.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/how-the-winkleviis-second-act-in-bitcoin-went-bad.html

“Portrait of the Artist as an Office Drone” – Anna Wiener (The New Yorker)

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“Private Equity” belongs to a micro-genre that has flourished in the past decade, which might be filed under the category of ambivalent success stories: workplace memoirs in which the author, whether owing to luck or ambition, lands in a demanding, well-compensated, culturally or pragmatically enviable job, and then—gradually finding it soul-deadening, ethically compromising, I.B.S.-inducing, or outright hostile to her personhood—quits”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/portrait-of-the-artist-as-an-office-drone