Should Gig Work Be Government-Run? - The labor reformer Wingham Rowan wants to reimagine labor markets for the digital age. - link
The Humanitarian Challenge of Unaccompanied Children at the Border - A lawyer who met with children held in Border Patrol custody describes the urgency of expediting their release. - link
On the Overnight Shift with the Amazon Union Organizers - At around 4 A.M., two veteran union reps whipped votes outside the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, and swapped stories of past organizing efforts at Piggly Wigglys and a condom factory in Eufaula. - link
The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor - For the moment, Marco Rubio and Stacey Abrams are on the same side. - link
Do We Actually Need More Gas Stations? - Resistance rises to Costco’s plans for mega stations. - link
From Vox
Can food carts survive the pandemic? -
Street vendors have lost their regular customers. Can they stay afloat despite the pandemic? | Getty Images
The streets are empty, but Joanna Despas is still cooking. Here’s what it’s like to run a food cart during a pandemic.
When I walk up to Mama Jo’s Breakfast Cart, which is located two blocks away from the MetLife Building in Midtown, Manhattan, she’s already packing up the kitchen. It’s 10:15 am on a Tuesday. She typically doesn’t close until 11 am. These used to be her prime hours, but the pandemic has altered things dramatically for the food cart business. The banks are closed, the tourists are gone, and everyone is working from home. The Mama Jo of the cart’s namesake, real name Joanna Despas, tells me that she’s been lucky to get more than 20 customers per day.
Despas is 70 years old, originally from rural northern Greece, and started up her breakfast cart 48 years ago. She cooks a blend of New York classics (bacon, egg, and cheese) and Mediterranean staples (spanakopita, olive bread) for the passing stream of professionals on their way to the office. Before Covid-19, Despas says, she routinely had lines around the block. These days, she mostly wheels her cart into town to feed the homeless for free, and to fire up the griddle for the handful of construction workers erecting a skyscraper across the street. Despas says she’s made a negligible amount of money all year, and only shows up because it feels better to cook than to sit around at home all day.
Despas holds out hope that eventually, when Broadway is open and the streets are full of tourists again, the street vending industry will bounce back. But she’s pessimistic about the prospects of a total New York City recovery. Can Mama Jo, or any street vendor for that matter, count on an endless flow of hungry yuppies after they’ve spent a year clocking in remotely? Is there going to be a sizable chunk of her clientele who simply won’t go into the office as much? Is the Zoom revolution going to last past the vaccine? Nobody knows for sure.
We talked about how much she misses her regulars, and why, even after the seismic repercussions of the pandemic, she’s still not planning on retiring anytime soon.
Who are your usual clients right now?
Right now, nobody. Everyone works from home. We have construction workers around here, because they are essential workers. But we don’t have business, and I don’t think we’ll have business until the vaccines take hold. And even then, I don’t know how much business will come back. A lot of businesses are closed, and when you look around the city, it’s dead. Vendors are gone. They pop up here and there, but they can’t make any money out here. At this point, I’m coming only for the homeless. There are so many of them, and where else are they going to get food?
Yes, and I have a bunch of people who help me with that. The construction workers buy food for them. They’re very nice. I have people who give me clothing and shoes that I hand out to them. I’ve noticed a lot more homeless people out here lately. They were always there, but it’s never been like this. They’re all over, and there’s no food. All the vendors have been helping out. Some of them come up to me and say, “There’s a couple people down on Eighth Avenue that need this or that,” and I get it for them. You feel a little better. You’re doing something instead of staying home. It’s good to be occupied.
Why do you think your business won’t bounce back?
I talk to people who work in banks and they like what they’re doing. I think they’re going to come in for a couple days a week and work from home at other times. The residential people here have moved. I think that’s how the city is going to work. It’s not going to be easy for us. If you don’t have a crowd for a year, you’re not going to build it all back the next day. It’s like starting back over from the beginning. That’s not restricted to vendors, the same goes for restaurants and delis.
How are you holding up financially?
No money. We’re not making any money. I’m doing okay. I’m 70 years old and I get my Social Security. My grandmother taught me to always put away money for a rainy day. So I’m okay, and my kids are okay and working from home. The big institutions are making money. The banks, the supermarkets, the franchises, they’re all doing okay. The people who are getting hurt are restaurants and vendors. It’s different out in Brooklyn and Queens, you can see some more life out there. But certainly not out here.
How many customers are you seeing a day?
No more than 20.
And you used to have lines around the block, right?
Oh yeah, and I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen again. But I’m an optimistic person. Maybe if they open up the Broadway shows, we’ll see what happens. But a lot of people have given up in this business. The garage used to have 200 pushcarts. Now we’ve got like, 100? Maybe less? And it gets less and less, because it gets more difficult.
Of course. I’ve got a lot of text messages from them. They leave messages on my social media. I’ve got people from all over the world that know me, and they all ask how I’m doing. They say, “I miss your food, I miss you.” They want to go back to normal. I see a lot of fear in people, and I don’t want people to fear. Fear, worry, and stress kills you, completely.
Have you thought about moving the cart elsewhere?
At my age, I’m not going to do that. I’m feeding the homeless, and if I’m not here I don’t know where they’re going to eat. I’m doing it for myself more than anything.
Has anything about this year made you want to retire?
I’m not going to retire. I’m not that kind of person. I’m never going to stay home, because I love what I do. I was only introduced to the idea of retirement in the United States. It’s not as much of a thing in Greece. You see 80-year-olds working the fields out there. I put in 18 hours a day, and sleep like four hours at night. I’m healthy. I cook everything myself. My diet is like the ancient Greeks’ — I’ve been on this corner for 48 years, and I haven’t taken one sick day.
Facebook wants Washington’s help running Facebook -
Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely at a Congressional hearing in November 2020; he is scheduled to appear at another remote hearing on March 25, 2021. | Hannah McKay/Getty Images
But not too much help: Mark Zuckerberg has a proposal.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a message for Washington: We’re happy to change the way we run Facebook. Just tell us how.
That’s the main takeaway from a statement he will provide to Congress on Thursday, in a hearing about social media’s role in spreading misinformation. But it’s also the mantra Zuckerberg and Facebook have been repeating for years, in targeted messaging like Washington Post op-eds and paid ads aimed at the Beltway crowd.
And it’s also, more or less, the Facebook default position when it comes to making all kinds of decisions about running the enormous and enormously profitable company: “Yes, we run a company that generated $84 billion in revenue last year and is currently worth more than $800 billion. But we’d like someone else to take responsibility for …” and here you can fill in the blank, because it can range from anything from whether a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo can run on the site to whether Donald Trump can post on Facebook.
Now Facebook is in a position where everyone in Washington wants to do … something about Facebook, though exactly what depends on what part of the political spectrum they sit on. Republicans want Facebook to promise to stop censoring Republicans, though there isn’t any evidence that’s actually happening; Democrats want Facebook to promise not to destabilize democracy.
So now Zuckerberg is adding a twist to his standard request for regulation: He is telling Congress it should force Facebook — and everyone else who runs an internet platform — “to demonstrate that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it.”
Facebook wouldn’t have to necessarily find all of that stuff and take down every last piece of it — Facebook is really big! But it would have to prove that it has spent a lot of time and money to try to do that.
In return, Zuckerberg says, Facebook and everyone else who complies would get to keep the protections offered by Section 230, a foundational piece of legislation that lets online platforms host content uploaded by users without taking responsibility for that content.
On the one hand, this seems like a fairly straightforward proposition. After all, Facebook and other big platforms like YouTube and Twitter already have systems that allow them to police copyright violations on their property. Why shouldn’t they have systems that do the same for “unlawful content”?
(Here it’s worth noting that in the early days of the platforms, their primary legal concern was avoiding the copyright claims that brought down Napster; the notion that the platforms might host content that could incite genocide or destabilize democracy wouldn’t get much traction until a decade later.)
On the other hand, this isn’t straightforward at all. It’s more or less clear when something violates copyright. But it won’t be at all clear what kind of content is “unlawful” — and waiting on Congress, which can’t find any kind of bipartisan agreement on anything at all, to decide exactly what Facebook should allow on its properties means Facebook will be waiting a very long time to hear what those guidelines are.
Which, you might argue, is fine with Facebook, if you believe that Facebook merely wants to appear as though it wants to work with Congress and hope all of the momentum to regulate tech goes away someday.
A different but equally realpolitik take: Facebook figures there’s going to be some kind of Section 230 reform, and by laying out a path it finds acceptable, it will have better odds of getting that result when it comes to negotiating with lawmakers and their staff. (Of note: Neither Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai nor Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who are also virtually testifying at Thursday’s hearing, asked Congress to modify Section 230 at all.)
Critics will also point out that creating these kinds of rules and systems isn’t nearly as big a problem for Facebook as it will be for smaller internet platform companies. (Remember that Washington levied a $5 billion fine and a new set of privacy guidelines on Facebook two years ago, and Facebook moved on without missing a beat because $5 billion isn’t a lot of money to Facebook.) But since this isn’t a new criticism, the company has a ready retort: Someone — not Facebook, certainly — should figure out the “definitions of an adequate system,” which “could be proportionate to platform size.”
Let’s be clear: Facebook doesn’t really want the government telling it what to do. It was happy(ish) to cut deals to pay Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for use of its content in America. In Australia, Facebook threw a fit when it was compelled to do the same thing by regulators there.
But what Facebook does want are legal guardrails and a promise that if it adheres to them, it can go about its very profitable business. Asking Congress to set those up — even if, or especially if, it takes a very long time — is a very small price to pay.
Dr. Rachel Levine’s historic confirmation to the Biden administration, explained -
Rachel Levine, then physician general for the state of Pennsylvania, dines with her mother Lillian Levine in 2016, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. | Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post/Getty Images
In a pivotal moment for trans health care, Levine has been confirmed as assistant secretary of health.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted to confirm former Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine as the new assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Levine’s confirmation is historic: She is now the highest-ranking openly transgender government official in US history.
In her new role, Levine will run the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH), which oversees the nation’s public health policy. She will be a key administration figure as the White House tackles the deepening Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 500,000 Americans. But she will also play an important role in rolling back a host of Trump-era policies on reproductive, adolescent, and LGBTQ health. As a trained pediatrician with a history of supporting evidence-based adolescent health, and who has spoken about her own closeted trans youth, her confirmation marks a sea change from the right-wing political activists appointed to OASH under former President Donald Trump.
Because of the historic nature of Levine’s appointment, there has been much talk about her trans identity. Meanwhile, her qualifications, which should not be overshadowed, have taken a back seat. For the last three years, she’s been the secretary of health for Pennsylvania, where she has taken the lead on the state’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her clear-eyed press conferences instructing Pennsylvanians on how to survive the pandemic have earned praise from Democrats inside the state. Before she became the secretary of health, she was the state’s physician general.
Levine frequently takes a holistic approach to policy, telling Philadelphia magazine last July how she conceptualizes public health. “Economic opportunity is health. A living wage with an increase in the minimum wage is actually health,” she said. “Improving educational opportunities, improving nutrition, improving the environment, improving transportation for people is health. Getting rid of racism is health.”
Following President Joe Biden’s nomination, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf called Levine “a highly skilled and valued member of my administration.”
“She has been a wise and dedicated partner during this pandemic and throughout her career with the commonwealth,” Wolf said in a statement. “I couldn’t be prouder of the tireless work she’s done to serve Pennsylvanians and protect the public health.”
Levine’s confirmation would be important, if only because she would instantly become a recognizable and authoritative trans voice on public health at a moment when access to trans health care is increasingly threatened worldwide. With Biden taking an explicitly pro-trans stance, Levine steps into a visible role in charge of federal youth health policy.
“This marks a real turning point that honors and includes trans people,” Molly Bangs, director of Equity Forward, an HHS watchdog group, told Vox about Levine’s nomination in January. “She’s given every indication that she will continue to center equity from all perspectives when ascending to federal office. Transgender youth need real quality health care and access to information more so than ever. She’s demonstrated that that is very much a cornerstone of really what drives her career.”
Levine takes over a key federal public health office in a pivotal moment
Her most immediate demand as assistant secretary of health is likely to be helping manage the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.
But beyond the pandemic, she will take over a department that underwent some radical changes under Trump. The Office for Women’s Health and the Office of Population Affairs oversee most of the government’s reproductive health initiatives. The transition from Obama to Trump saw progressive initiatives tossed out in favor of anti-reproductive health policies, including rolling back the Obamacare birth control mandate.
Meanwhile, the Office of Adolescent Health, which administered the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, was shunted to a different office’s oversight and essentially shuttered under Trump. One of Levine’s first accomplishments in Pennsylvania was establishing the state’s Office of Adolescent Health, and she’ll now be tasked with restoring that office at the federal level
“This position of assistant secretary of health has a massive portfolio of issues,” said Bangs. “Dr. Levine and her colleagues will have their work cut out for them, and they will need a really proactive agenda in order to not just reverse the damage that’s been done but also protect and expand LGBTQ rights [and] sexual and reproductive health [access].”
That work will get underway almost immediately. Even before Levine’s confirmation hearing was scheduled, the Biden administration took initial steps to overturn Trump policy at OASH. The White House has already launched a review of the Title X domestic gag rule — which banned federal funding to health clinics that perform or refer patients for abortions.
Levine’s office will oversee the review, putting her at the center of US reproductive health policy for the next several years.
Levine will not be the first openly trans government official
Though she is deeply qualified for the position, Levine’s trans identity has grabbed the lion’s share of media attention.
Newspapers and websites have trumpeted her identity, almost to the exclusion of any other facts about her. “Biden picks 1st transgender person for Senate-confirmed post,” read an Associated Press headline in January. Even the LGBTQ Nation’s headline — “Joe Biden picks transgender woman for assistant health secretary” — did not mention Levine by name.
While Levine is now the highest-ranking transgender official in the federal government, a welcome step forward for a community that has historically had very little institutional power, she is not the first openly trans government official appointed by a president; she is just the first to be confirmed by the Senate. President Barack Obama named trans woman Amanda Simpson senior technical adviser in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security in 2010, though it was not a Senate-confirmed appointment.
Levine’s trans identity will inform her new role as one of the nation’s top public health officials.“At a time when access to health care is a growing crisis for transgender people made worse by anti-LGBTQ legislation and legislators across the nation, Dr. Levine has the empathy to understand the health needs of our diverse country and the skillset to improve them,” Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, has said in a statement.
Levine has spoken previously about her experiences as a closeted trans child. At a conference in 2015, just after she’d been appointed Pennsylvania’s acting physician general, she described growing up playing football and hockey near Boston in the ’60s, but also carrying with her a deep secret. ”All I knew is I wanted to be a girl, or I was a girl, or female,” she told a crowd in Swatara Township, Pennsylvania.
During that conference, Levine spoke directly to the state’s trans youth. “What I want to tell those kids is I am there for you. We are here for you,” she said. “Please don’t harm yourself and please don’t despair, because we are there for you.”
It’s a message she’s continued to stand by throughout her public health career, even as critics and random internet trolls relentlessly attacked her gender identity and appearance. And she’s making history in a time and place when trans “firsts” are becoming rarer — an appointment that is as much a win for trans people as it is for a well-qualified doctor with a lifetime of public health experience.
From The Hindu: Sports
National Para Athletics hits a new low as night events held under mobile phone torch lights - A few events at night conducted with just mobile phone torch lights
Torch relay for Tokyo Olympics kicks off its 121-day journey - The ceremony was closed to the public because of the fear of spreading COVID-19 but was streamed live.
Norway players make Qatar protest in World Cup qualifier - Norway have one of their best chances in recent memory to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1998.
India seeks to play fearless football - Takes on Oman in first international after COVID-19 lockdown
Bhavani set to resume training at Livorno - India’s star fencer Bhavani Devi is all set to resume training at Livorno (Italy) with coach Nicola Zanotti for the Tokyo Olympics.“I will be leaving
From The Hindu: National News
‘Farrago of venomous claims on love jihad’: Shashi Tharoor on BJP’s Kerala manifesto - “The only consolation is that they will never be in a position to implement any of it,” the MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.
Campaign ends for first phase of poll in West Bengal - Curtains came down at 5 pm on Thursday on the high decibel campaign in 30 assembly seats in West Bengal where polls are scheduled in the first phase
Hate crime proceedings against Patricia Mukhim quashed - SC agrees with Editor of Shillong Times that her social media post was only an expression of truth
Bengal tops in Facebook political ad spend among poll-bound states - Political parties of West Bengal spent about ₹ 3.74 crore on poll-related campaigns which fall under Facebook’s advertisement category.
Parliament passes Bill to set up National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development - Parliament on Thursday passed a Bill to set up the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development (NaBFID) to fund infrastructure project
From BBC: Europe
Covid-19: Merkel defends rollout as vaccine pressure grows - German Chancellor Angela Merkel defends the EU’s decision to procure coronavirus vaccines jointly.
Daniel Guerini: Lazio youth-team midfielder dies aged 19 - Lazio say they are “shocked by pain” following the death of 19-year-old youth-team midfielder Daniel Guerini.
Nagorno-Karabakh: The mystery of the missing church - The BBC investigates the disappearance of an Armenian church that changed hands in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Nice catch: Fisherman rescues boy stranded on ice - A fisherman in Ukraine reels in a boy who was stranded on a block of ice in a river.
Julie Pomagalski, French former snowboard world champion, dies in Swiss avalanche - Julie Pomagalski, 40, was swept away while skiing off-piste on a mountain in Switzerland.
From Ars Technica
After dramatic rebuke, AstraZeneca lowers vaccine efficacy estimate—a little - Independent experts called the earlier analysis “outdated and potentially misleading.” - link
It’s been 20 years since the launch of Mac OS X - It’s macOS 11 now, but the DNA is the same. - link
Facebook shuts down hackers who infected iOS and Android devices - Social media platform used to spread malware that spied on Uyghurs. - link
Former Trump vaccine czar fired over substantiated sexual harassment claim - GSK hired a law firm for an investigation, which substantiated the claims. - link
Having it all: Protecting biodiversity, carbon capture, and fish stocks - Researchers scan the world’s oceans to find ideal locations for protection. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A man takes a pleasant stroll on a Friday evening… suddenly, the Devil himself pops up in front of him -
and whispers, “Take all the money in your wallet, go to this casino, and put them on the number 27!”
The man is first shocked, then becomes curious, and quickly yields, goes to the casino, puts all the money on 27 and wins!
Excited he exists the casino and meets the Devil again. The latter is silent for a moment and then says again, “Take all your money - all that you’ve won - go inside and put them on 27!” - “Again?!” - “Yes! Do it!” - The man quickly yields, goes in again, puts all the money on 27 and … wins!
Now everyone in the casino is amazed, they check the wheel, nope no tilt or bias (and it was outputting numbers randomly before), seems like genuine luck, reluctantly he’s given almost two hundred thousand dollars and leaves elated. Outside he meets the Devil again who again tells him to go put everything on 27, the man is shocked but does so, and wins again!
And now he’s given most of the casino’s bank, millions of dollars, walks out shining like a star, and says to the Devil, “I don’t know why people say you’re the most sinister being there is, you’ve been awesome to me today!!”
The Devil looks at him strangely, pauses, and replies, “Well that may be true or not but you are definitely the luckiest motherfucking son of a bitch that I’ve ever fucking seen!!”
So he brings it home and hires a guy to come tune it. The piano tuner struggles with it and after five minutes says, “Lemme guess… West African piano?”
“Yeah, how did you know?” my uncle responds.
“Well, West African pianos are notoriously hard to tune,” he says, “not like North African pianos, they Tunisia “
