Luis Amaral

@lamaral
55 Followers
26 Following
88 Posts
Socialist worried about the climate emergency, inequality, and the failure of our political systems. Oh, and the current state of scientific training, funding, and reward systems.

Layoffs:
- don't save money
- don't improve company performance
- don't increase stock pricess
- destroy trust
- have huge impacts on health, well-being, and income of employees

So why do layoffs? It's a network effect: execs lay people off because other companies are doing it

Stanford Biz School article: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/

Harvard Biz Review:
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about-layoffs

What explains recent tech layoffs, and why should we be worried? | Stanford News

As layoffs in the tech sector mount, Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer is worried. Research – by him, and others – has shown that the stress layoffs create takes a devastating toll on behavioral and physical health and increases mortality and morbidity substantially. Layoffs literally kill people, he said.

Stanford News
Want to learn about documentation of training data? There are many many options out there now, including: datasheets, data statements, data cards, dataset nutrition labels, many dating from initial work around 2017. Not documenting at this point is willful squirreliness at best.
The important truth is towards the end of the article — The Trillion-Dollar Coin Might Be the Least Bad Option - The Atlantic https://apple.news/Aw8KumgXqS-qBPSBTibkMuA
The Trillion-Dollar Coin Might Be the Least Bad Option — The Atlantic

Why the legal scholar Rohan Grey thinks the U.S. Mint can defuse the debt-ceiling standoff

Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc - The Guardian https://apple.news/AaTCItrw3S3i6f-zt-lcJrQ
Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc — Guardian US

By 2050 electric vehicles could require huge amounts of lithium for their batteries, causing damaging expansions of mining

Scientists Have a Genius Plan: Turn Abandoned Mines Into Gravity Batteries - Popular Mechanics https://apple.news/AFfDneFebQO6nGIL7SBrQjg
Scientists Have a Genius Plan: Turn Abandoned Mines Into Gravity Batteries — Popular Mechanics

This might be the coolest energy storage solution yet.

The Brutal Reality of Life in America’s Most Notorious Jail - The Atlantic https://apple.news/ATeHHtmldRKWHL-ytdOvfxA
The Brutal Reality of Life in America’s Most Notorious Jail — The Atlantic

I’ve been locked up in maximum-security prisons for two decades. My time on Rikers Island was worse.

These white dudes who become presidents, senators, billionaires, falsifying credentials & I was fired with comments of how our paper with 158 references was missing a citation without specifying which. You have ppl mentioning “critiques” written by white supremacists indicted for harassment, recruited by other white supremacists to harass & stalk us, & journalists asked me how I’d respond to said “critiques” cause they expect me, with all my expertise & receipts, to answer to any random dude.
We are at most, a few months away from apps with content and sharing mechanisms just not possible on Twitter or other centralized, closed-source platforms. That's when the momentum will really start to build for Activitypub and other protocols supporting federated networks. We have stop talking about it being a twitter "alternative" and start talking about is as an evolutionary step forward in global social networking. Because that's what it is.
Electric Vehicles Are Bringing Out the Worst in Us - The Atlantic https://apple.news/AwS52TXHlSNG-_gSFVjcS7Q
Electric Vehicles Are Bringing Out the Worst in Us — The Atlantic

The downside of heavy, overpowered trucks and SUVs