What we’re reading (12/20)
“The United States Of Fraud” (Business Insider). “Against that backdrop [of AI], some people have turned to petty fraud, policy abuse, and small acts of sabotage as a means of getting back at their economic overlords. They're engaging in spurts of shoplifting, taking part in return shenanigans, and using their credit cards for ‘friendly fraud’ that's anything but. They see — or at least excuse — these acts not as stealing but as small moments of deserved vengeance in a system that violates their sense of basic fairness at every turn.”
“When AI Comes To Town” (Sherwood). “A Delaware company called Laidley LLC wanted to build ‘a multi-billion-dollar datacenter campus in the Parish resulting in several hundred new good paying jobs,"‘ according to the text of the resolution, published later in the local newspaper. At a special meeting, in the middle of the day on a Thursday, the commissioners passed the plan with no opposition. It set a course for the transformation of hundreds of acres of state-owned farmland into a modern-day AI factory.”
“These Air-Traffic Controllers Are Leaving Their Jobs—And Heading To Australia” (Wall Street Journal). “Chris Dickinson was stunned after he took an impromptu tour of an air-traffic control tower in Sydney, Australia. Controllers there worked 36-hour weeks on average and seemed happy, rather than stressed. They had more weekends free. ‘It’s absolutely disgusting how much better their lifestyles are than ours,’ said Dickinson, who worked air-traffic control in the U.S. for 13 years and visited the Sydney tower on a trip two years ago. Now he is one of them. Dickinson is among dozens of controllers from the U.S. leaving for jobs overseeing air traffic in Australia, lured by the prospects of a less stressful work environment. Morale among U.S. air-traffic controllers has eroded, according to interviews with a dozen current and former controllers. Frustration has mounted over challenging workloads and pay that they say has lagged behind the rate of inflation.”
“Government’s Historic Role As Trusted Information Source Is Under Threat” (Washington Post). “Researchers and activists increasingly fear that under the Trump administration, the U.S. government is abdicating its historic role as a clearinghouse for reliable information — a momentous shift for what has been the world’s foremost producer of widely accepted data for everyone including academic researchers, local governments and ordinary citizens. Despite sharp swings in the worldview of successive presidents, most agencies have maintained their reputation for evenhanded information.”
“There’s A 92 Percent Chance Trump Is Making It Up” (The Atlantic). “His fixation on the number between 91 and 93 has been a feature for a while. In April, Trump claimed that egg prices had fallen by 92 percent. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics said 12.7 percent.) And at a rally shortly before last November’s election, while railing against journalists and the media, he allowed that ‘not all of them’ are “sick people.” Just ‘about 92 percent.’ That one, admittedly, is difficult to fact-check…[m]ore often than not, the president links the 92 (or more) percent claim to another[.]”
