Favorites April 30 2021

Alec MacGillis @AlecMacGillis

"The combined yearly revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft & Facebook is $1.2 trillion, >25% higher than [before] pandemic. In less than a week, those 5 giants make more in sales than McDonald’s does in a year." @ShiraOvide on where we've arrived:

nytimes.com‘A Perfect Positive Storm’: Bonkers Dollars for Big TechThe dictionary doesn’t have enough superlatives to describe what’s happening to the five biggest technology companies, raising uncomfortable questions for their C.E.O.s.

That 25% figure is a bit surprising to me, although Amazon at least has pretty thin margins.

Charlotte Swasey @charlotteeffect

I got curious about the odd wording of the Florida minimum wage ballot measure and did a test of the language- turns out, describing the proposed min wage as $9.50 + $1.50 each year instead of $15 by a date increases support quite a bit

dataforprogress.orgLanguage of Polling Questions Impacts Support For A $15 Minimum Wage<p>Though American politics is conducted at the state and congressional district level, polling and analysis are largely done at the national level. We reject that model, and will use state-of-the art techniques in political science and data science to bring layers of nuance and depth to polling.</p…

I wonder if it's because the ‘fight for 15’ branding has moved the Overton window enough that now $9.50 sounds reasonable…

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

raising the capital gains tax rate is supply side economics now — gotta keep the high skill folks in the workforce

The huge stock market gains have had unexpected effects. Yglesias' framing is a bit dark though.

Derek Lowe @Dereklowe

Yet more evidence that you really, really want to get your immune response against the coronavirus from a vaccination rather than an infection.

Eric Topol @EricTopol

Evidence for covid-induced autoimmunity in the central nervous system in 5 of 7 patients with neurologic symptoms https://t.co/TrJuNYgnnA by @ericsongg @YaleMed @YaleIBIO @ShelFarFar and colleagues @CellPressNews https://t.co/nFhDlLl3FI

Seriously, get vaccinated.

Casey Newton @CaseyNewton

About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today after a contentious all-hands meeting. I’m told more are coming.

This is a wild ride of a story. Basecamp declared that all political conversation was banned at the company, the staff got mad. Basecamp offered buyouts and lost quite a few employees.

Matthew Garrett @mjg59

Me banning discussion of politics at work: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me losing 30% of my workforce: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

If you don't recognize the reference.

Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal

Seems noteworthy

Seung Min Kim @seungminkim

The number of unaccompanied migrant children held in jail-like conditions by CBP has dropped nearly 84 percent in the span of a month https://t.co/189qTvtMqY

Great news, sounds like they mostly got better at getting them to a sponsor or guardian in the US faster.

Chinchymcchilla @chinchymcchilla

im single now i guess

🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵 (Also, am I the only one who dislikes that message bubble shading style?)

And if you’re not into jokes about electronic music, a photo from last fall: