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The collapsed Maltese judicial system

It is obvious that the Maltese judicial system has totally collapsed. In todays The Times one can read of a man who has raped his nephew and niece and sexually abused their cousin when they were five, eight and thirteen years old. The abuses took place during several years until 2007. The father of the siblings reported this to the police 2007 and insisted that the police should take immediately action. The perpetrator, when then heard by the police, immediately admitted the acts and also showed the police videos that he previously had shown to his victims. The videos contained sexual actions the perpetrator had had with his wife. One can wonder why these terrible crimes not ended up in court until 2012! The man was this week sentenced to ten years in prison. What has happened since 2007? How have the victims and their families felt during this time? Is there any excuse for this failure of the judicial system? There is no wonder that the people in Malta has very low confidence in the judicial system and that so many people think that judges accept bribes; they are probably more interested in their own wellbeing than the one of people who have been abused. Those people are not abused only by a perpetrator but also by the judicial system. This is a shame on Malta and its (lack of ) functional judicial system.




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A Maltese priest’s distorted view of the judiciary's role in society

In yesterdays The Times a Maltese priest, Mgr. Anton Gaucia, complains once more that a High Court in London a few weeks ago gave a sentence ruling that “the Catholic Church can be held liable for the wrongdoings of its priests”. Mgr. Gaucia have earlier, January 8 in Sunday Times, made the same complaint. Now Mgr. Gaucia also complains over the fact that a Mr. Justice in London has ruled that “the saying of prayers as part of the formal meeting of a council is not lawful”, adding that “there is no statutory power permitting the practice to continue”.
First things first; of course the Church shall be liable for what its employees/priests do in Alphain their capacity as priests. The children in these cases were in the care of a Catholic institution. I wonder what Mgr. Gaucia would say about if a municipal employee at a daycare sexually molest a child that the child’s parents left in its care. Of course, the municipality would be responsible for its negligence and for its failure to protect a child. The same goes of course for the Church. Mgr. Gaucia may of course, probably not being a father himself in the more down to earth sense, not understand what damage the Church and its priests done to these children. The people The Observer talked to in this matter in Malta all agree with The Observer and I think it would be wise of the Church to listen to the people in this.
Second; it might soon be time for priests like Mgr. Gauci and his colleagues to realize what century they live in. The time when Catholics ruled southern Europe is gone forever. There are Muslims, Hindus, Jews and many other people of different beliefs that have and are going to have positions in the society among which, of course, also positions in a council. Does Mgr. Gauci really mean that these people must attend Catholic or Protestant prayers? Or shall they leave when such prayer is to be said? Another possibility would of course be to have, say ten, different rooms where people of different beliefs could pray in accordance with such belief before the council meeting. Mgr Gauci, please grow up and realize what reality you live in.




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Malta's judicial system once more

In todays The Times the public is given a good explanation why the Maltese courts do not have time for unimportant cases like murders, trafficking, rapes, smuggling of narcotics etc. The courts have far more important cases to deal with, namely cases of insulting. A circus agent felt insulted after being called a clown. This terrible crime was rather soon brought to court for judgment. AlphaThe Observer is confident that the public feel great gratitude that the legal system makes such wise priorities.




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Again, the Maltese judicial system is proven to have collapsed and now it also seems ridiculous



Today one can read in The Times of a man being sentenced to one month in prison and fined 233€ for illegal gambling. The fantastic and almost unbelievable fact is that the crime was committed in 2001 and the man pleaded guilty in 2002. The man had to wait ten years to be punished for a crime he had admitted almost immediately! To make this even more surprising (well, maybe not so surprising; this is probably typically for the judicial system in Malta) the judge found that the prosecution had failed to prove the allegations against the man, but, since he had admitted the crime the judge had to find him guilty. The Observer sincerely hopes that the latter is not true. In most other countries, with a more sophisticated and functioning judicial system than Malta, an admission is not enough to prove that a person has committed a crime.  When famous murders occur, quite many people come to the police and plead guilty. This is a well-known fact among Alphacriminologists. Probably and hopefully The Times has not published full details about why the judge had to find the man guilty.







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Habitat: Environmentalists eye city’s investment policies

Divestment is “more urgent” in Toronto than NYC

A growing list of large institutional investors around the world – state and provincial pension funds, university endowments, and most recently, New York City itself, have been aggressively divesting from fossil fuel investments so as to do their part in mitigating against climate change. Here in Toronto, it’s been a different story. Prominent institutional investors, […]

The post Habitat: Environmentalists eye city’s investment policies appeared first on Torontoist.






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Take 4 Minutes and Be Mesmerized By PSY and Crew Practicing Their Choreography

PSY is doing all those moves in a mock-turtleneck and with a belt on. Clearly that's enough proof that PSY is talented K-Pop robot sent to inspire us all.




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#195: Edible to the Point of Delicious!





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Testing participation vs. testing capacity

This paper argues that testing participation –and not testing capacity–is the biggest obstacle to a successful “test and isolate”-strategy, as recently proposed by Paul Romer. If ????0=2.5,at least 60percentof a population needs to participate in a testing program to make it theoretically possible to achieve an effective reproduction rate for the whole population,????'', below 1. […]

The post Testing participation vs. testing capacity appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.




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Palast on Staying Home with Josh Fox: Let voters choose the politicians not other way around

There is much to fear, especially for minority and young voters, with a switch to all-mail voting — unless our system is fixed. Palast and Fox discuss the challenges our democracy faces during the coronavirus pandemic and what we need to do to

The post Palast on Staying Home with Josh Fox: Let voters choose the politicians not other way around appeared first on Greg Palast.




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On This Day in Space! May 4, 2011: 1st official 'Star Wars' Day celebration

On May 4, 2011, the first organized "Star Wars" Day celebration happened in Toronto. See how it happened in our On This Day in Space video series!




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Official: Taika Waititi to co-write and direct 'Star Wars' film

"Thor: Love and Thunder" writer/director Taika Waititi has signed on to write and direct a "Star Wars" film.




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dicing with death

Previously on this blog, I've discussed whether BrE and AmE are different in their singular for dice. Have a look at that blog post if that's what you're interested in.

This one is about the phrase to dice with death, meaning essentially, to take risks with one's life or safety. It's one of those things that I didn't reali{s/z}e was BrE until another American pointed it out to me. (Apologies if you were that uncredited American—I can no longer find the correspondence.)

The OED says the use of dice to mean 'risk' is especially associated with motor sports (a phrase that itself seems to be more BrE than AmE). It is not about chopping up death into cubes, but about 'gambling with one's life' (a phrasing that can be used in either language). Though Merriam-Webster includes this use of dice with an example from Newsweek, it's nowhere to be seen in the American portion of the GloWBE corpus.

The phrase raised two questions for me:
  • is it dicing with death or dicing with Death?
    I imagined the latter, that it's playing a game of dice with the Grim Reaper. But none of the corpus examples treat death as a proper name, so perhaps I'm alone in that.
  • what's the relationship to dancing with death
Since not a lot of people use dice as an intransitive verb to mean 'to play dice', I was imagining that dance with death might have arisen from a misunderstanding of dice with death—an eggcorn, if you will.  And I think there's some evidence to back that up:


In this Google Books Ngram chart (click on it for details), the blue line shows dicing with death is already in existence in BrE during (BrE) the War. The green line is American use of it, intermingling early on with dancing with death. Dancing with death eventually catches up with dicing in AmE, while also rising in BrE, perhaps getting more currency as people have more distance from the 'risk' use of dice as a verb.

For what it's worth, it's slightly easier to find capital-D Death with dance than with dice, but it's far more common to find it lower-case.




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Malicious USB Drives Infect 35,000 Computers With Crypto-Mining Botnet

Cybersecurity researchers from ESET on Thursday said they took down a portion of a malware botnet comprising at least 35,000 compromised Windows systems that attackers were secretly using to mine Monero cryptocurrency. The botnet, named "VictoryGate," has been active since May 2019, with infections mainly reported in Latin America, particularly Peru accounting for 90% of the compromised




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Pâte Brisée : Jêrôme's 4-ingredient wine-based shortcrust pastry is easy, versatile, delicious for savory quiche or sweet, delectable pie!

I can tell you--after seeing them in the bathroom mirror this morning--this shortcrust pastry recipe will give you les poignées d'amour. That's French for "love handles." Même pas peur? Not even scared? Good! Read on and discover a truly delicious and versatile pâte brisée. I should know...I've tested 10 of them in the past week--ever since you asked for the recipe! Today's Word: la pâte brisée : shortcrust pastry, a rich dough for making pie crust Audio: Listen to the words pâte brisée in this soundfile En cuisine, la pâte brisée est une pâte servant de base aux tartes salées ou sucrées. La pâte brisée désigne généralement une pâte composée principalement de farine et de matière grasse sans sucre. In cooking, shortcrust pastry is a dough used as a base for savory or sweet pies. Shortcrust pastry generally refers to a dough composed mainly of flour and fat, without sugar. Jérôme's Pâte Brisée: 4-ingredient Shortcrust Pastry (makes one large or two small tarts!) Ingredients... 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup white wine 1/2 cup sunflower oil Note: ordinary white wine is all you need. Leftover wine will work as long as it hasn't turned to vinegar. For...




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01 – The Internet Musician – Podcast Launch and Describing Your Music

Welcome to the first episode of the Internet Musician Podcast! Show notes for Episode #1: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: The first episode of The Internet Musician Podcast, hosted by indie artist and internet music marketing junkie Brian Hartzog (http://www.brianhartzog.net).  In this introductory episode, Brian introduces himself, his indie music credentials and […]



  • Podcast
  • describe your music
  • internet music promotion
  • music marketing podcast
  • promotion your music on the internet
  • The Internet Musician Podcast

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02 – The Internet Musician – Music Tools for the Indie Artist/Songwriter

Show notes for Episode #2: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: In this episode, I present “Music Tools for the Indie Artist”, a topic that I recently presented to a local songwriting group.  Specifically, I present the tools and process I use to capture and preserve those moments of musical inspiration–no matter whether they strike […]




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03 – The Internet Musician – Five Things You Must Believe To Go Indie

Show notes for Episode #3: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: Also in this episode, I discuss the five things you must believe cultivate your DIY music attitude, including: 1. The business has been lying to you. Major label artists are not getting rich off of record sales. Radio is fake. Don’t belive […]



  • Podcast
  • DIY music attitude
  • internet musician podcast
  • music marketing on the internet

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04 – The Internet Musician – 8 Steps to Create a Music Website

Show Notes for Episode 4: Subscribe to the Internet Musician Podcast with iTunes: As a musician, you need a good website.  You know that. But you really don’t need to spend years trying to understand the technology. You also don’t want to spend tons of time working on your site without knowing if you’re doing things […]



  • Podcast
  • create a music website
  • create a website
  • music website design

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06 – The Internet Musician – Music Licensing for Indie Artists

Show Notes for Episode 6: Following my recent appearance on the Film and TV Music Licensing Panel at the MidAtlantic Music Conference here in Charlotte, NC, I definitely have music licensing on my mind.  It’s always been a passion of mind…one of those areas of music marketing that I’ve researched exhaustively for years.  It’s also […]




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Dare to DREAM: Ami Sanyal and how to pitch value-based pricing.


Value-based pricing is the holy grail of freelancing. It’s how you make a lot of money by showing your clients that you can give them results. It’s also not easy to make the switch to this pricing structure!

Returning guest Ami Sanyal shares his DREAM framework for getting clients on board with paying you more! Ami walks you through:

  • Discovery
  • Repel
  • Establish Packages
  • Address Risk
  • Money

Ami breaks down this approach, and how he was able to transform his agency with this approach! 

Want Ami’s script for this approach? Text EZGROW to 393939 for a step-by-step guide! 

Today’s links: 

Want to support the show?

Order a custom infographic from Easel.ly! Use this link (https://www.easel.ly/infographicdesign/) for a great price! 

Think you’d be a great fit for the show? Let me know at twitter.com/KCarCFH

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or recommend us to a friend. It helps immensely.


Download here!




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Opinion: Haiti’s Electoral Shambles, CEP Officials Can Either Fix the Mess or They Go to Jail

By WADNER PIERRE

For too long, people paid by Haitian people to do their job have not been held accountable. Now, it’s the time for the Haiti’s electoral officials – the Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) – to either fix the electoral mess or go to jail.

It is despicable that a CEP official threatened to shut down the whole electoral process instead of collaborating with a government-backed commission to investigate massive electoral frauds that they fail to avoid. Marie Carmelle Paul Austin, a member of the electoral council, told a radio in Haiti’s capital that the electoral council members are ready to depart in bloc “If this commission’s purpose is to redo or verify the work that the CEP has already done, the council members will resign.” What Madame Austin did not say is that when you betray your people, violate your country’s laws and contribute to social and political destabilization you should be in jail.

For too long, Haitian people have been struggling for participative democracy and social justice. They’ve been ignored by Haitian officials who primarily seek to satisfy the interest of their international backers like the United States, Canada and France by either plotting electoral coups. Although the Martelly administration finally established a commission to address the latest electoral disaster, it is uncertain that anything will come of it.

Martelly himself was a beneficiary of an electoral fiasco. How can one believe he will accept any recommendation asking the removal of his handpicked candidate? This move reminds me of an article by Haiti’s renowned author Edwidge Danticat: Sweet Micky and the Sad Déjà Vu of Haiti’s Presidential Elections.

read more




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DevOpsDays NYC 2020 Call For Participation!

DevOpsdays NYC is happening March 3-4, 2020. The Call For Participation (CFP) is now open!

If you have any ideas that you want to share with the local community please submit your talks using the link below:

https://www.papercall.io/dodnyc2020




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Writers and illustrators: Learning to accept criticism is a key to getting published

Advice for those who are trying to get published or who want a longterm career in the publishing industry: you need to develop a thick hide when it comes to criticism. 

No matter what stage you are in your career, if you are putting yourself and your work out there for people to see (whether it's agents or editors or art directors or reviewers or other readers), you WILL get criticism. It might be criticism in the form of critiques from a trusted group of writer or illustrator friends. It might be a form rejection letter or detailed rejection letter. Even after you get a contract, you will be getting feedback and change requests from your editor or art director. After your book comes out, some people will not like your book -- and some of those people may be reviewers.

If you are sensitive to harsh judgement, you need to find a way to cope with this early on if you want to stay in the game. Just don't do it in public!

For critiques of your work, never make changes right away. This is especially important for those who are insecure about their own skills! Let the feedback sit for at least a day or two (longer if you can wait), THEN come back to it with more objectivity. Do you agree with the feedback? Don't blindly make a change to your manuscript if you don't agree or understand why.

And never, ever respond to negative reviews in public.

Some useful resources:

Gail Carson Levine has great advice about how to take criticism, particularly from a critique.

11 Writers On How They Deal With Criticism - by Jason Diamond.

6 Top Tips For Dealing With Criticism Of Your Writing - from WritersEdit. This piece advises AGAINST reading all (if any) of your reviews in Goodreads and other places geared toward readers; I've heard this piece of advice from a prominent author in her workshop as well.

Deal With Criticism Like A Pro - by Bryan Collins on WritetoDone. This advice is mainly geared toward negative feedback from an editor; Bryan is a nonfiction freelance writer.




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Geneticists pump the brakes on DNA, revealing key developmental process

Researchers at Princeton have revealed the inner workings of a gene repression mechanism in fruit fly embryos, adding insight to the study of human diseases.




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EPA Grant to Arkansas State Plant Board Will Improve Pesticide Programs

DALLAS – (May 1, 2020) Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a grant to the Arkansas State Plant Board for $55,346. The funds will be used to enhance management and software systems that support the state’s pesticide programs.




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EPA Grant to Texas Department of Agriculture Will Support Pesticide Safety

DALLAS – (April 30, 2020) Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a grant to the Texas Department of Agriculture for $73,056. The funds will be used to support a variety of pesticide training and inspection programs.




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EPA Issues Order to Seal Shield, LLC in Orlando, Florida to Stop Selling Unregistered Pesticides and a Misbranded Pesticide Device

ATLANTA (April 24, 2020) -- The U.S.




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Columbia Water & Light in Missouri Honored as ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for Cost-Saving, Energy-Efficient Solutions

Environmental News  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE




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Emerson Sensi and True Manufacturing in St. Louis Metro Honored as ENERGY STAR Partners of the Year for Cost-Saving, Energy-Efficient Solutions

Environmental News  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE




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Des Moines Public Schools and Principal Real Estate Investors LLC in Iowa Honored as ENERGY STAR Partners of the Year for Cost-Saving, Energy-Efficient Solutions

Environmental News  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE




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NCLH secures sufficient funds to keep it afloat for a year

It says it can cope with 12 months' of cruise cancellations




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Derbyshire 76 ChesterfieldSpring flowersfinding new pathsnoticing things you miss when you drive in a car Hello Denmark bacon pigs and more bacon

My virtual trip has taken me to Denmark . Another country added to the list and another magnet purchased for the board in the kitchen . So thoughts on Denmark . I wonder what the roads will be like. Will they resemble the de dum de dum roads of Belgium or




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MH370: Flight Investigator Claims Murder-Suicide

Canadian accident investigator Larry Vance claims to have solved the mystery of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. In an interview, he explains why he believes the plane's captain deliberately ditched the aircraft.




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Politicians Call for Fewer Climate Protections During Coronavirus Crisis

German politicians have begun calling for industry to be shielded from too much environmental protection during the coronavirus crisis. But corporations aren't joining the appeal. They managed to turn CO2 reduction into a competitive advantage long ago.




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Health vs. Wealth? Public Health Policies and the Economy During Covid-19 -- by Zhixian Lin, Christopher M. Meissner

We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical policy interventions (NPIs) like “stay-at-home” orders on the spread of infectious disease. NPIs are associated with slower growth of Covid-19 cases. NPIs “spillover” into other jurisdictions. NPIs are not associated with significantly worse economic outcomes measured by job losses. Job losses have been no higher in US states that implemented “stay-at-home” during the Covid-19 pandemic than in states that did not have “stay-at-home”. All of these results demonstrate that the Covid-19 pandemic is a common economic and public health shock. The tradeoff between the economy and public health today depends strongly on what is happening elsewhere. This underscores the importance of coordinated economic and public health responses.




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Dutch Exceptionalism: Will Holland's Looser Corona Policies Pay Off?

One EU country after the other is moving to restrict public life. The Dutch government has opted for less drastic measures, hoping for herd immunity and relying on the common sense of its people. But the country has still had to make adjustments to its policies.




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Employer Policies and the Immigrant-Native Earnings Gap -- by Benoit Dostie, Jiang Li, David Card, Daniel Parent

We use longitudinal data from the income tax system to study the impacts of firms’ employment and wage-setting policies on the level and change in immigrant-native wage differences in Canada. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the early 2000s, distinguishing between those with and without a college degree from two broad groups of countries – the U.S., the U.K. and Northern Europe, and the rest of the world. Consistent with a growing literature based on the two-way fixed effects model of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999), we find that firm-specific wage premiums explain a significant share of earnings inequality in Canada and contribute to the average earnings gap between immigrants and natives. In the decade after receiving permanent status, earnings of immigrants rise relative to those of natives. Compositional effects due to selective outmigration and changing participation play no role in this gain. About one-sixth is attributable to movements up the job ladder to employers that offer higher pay premiums for all groups, with particularly large gains for immigrants from the “rest of the world” countries.




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Man who filmed Ahmaud Arbery killing also under investigation, Georgia official says

A day after a father and son were charged in the February killing of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a Georgia official promised a thorough probe into the case and said the man who filmed the horrific incident is also under investigation. In a news conference Friday morning, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said “every stone will be turned over" and if the facts lead agents to make another arrest “they will do that.”




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Ryanair criticises aircraft parking charges in Dublin

Ryanair has criticised what it has described as unjustified charges for aircraft that are parked at Dublin airport while not in use due to the Covid-19 crisis.




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Readers sound off on struggling small businesses, social distancing policing and solving homelessness

Lynbrook, L.I.: The news outlets have not covered the way that the smallest small businesses have been overlooked during the pandemic. As a Schedule C tax filer, I am eligible to collect Pandemic Unemployment Assistance under the CARES Act. I applied for PUA on March 16. I have been certifying for benefits every week. This entire time, my online account with the state Department of Labor says that my case is still pending.




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Distance learning: Social-distance policing is racially skewed; how to fix it

Seen plenty of people on sidewalks or in parks gallivanting without masks and clustering less than six feet apart? Of course you have, no matter the racial, religious or ethnic composition of the neighborhood; it’s happening everywhere, especially on nice days.




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California holds 73% of the nation’s priciest ZIP codes for home buyers

According to a new report from real estate database PropertyShark, California has accounted for roughly 73% of the country’s priciest ZIP codes for home buyers this year.




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Which Workers Bear the Burden of Social Distancing Policies? -- by Simon Mongey, Laura Pilossoph, Alex Weinberg

What are the characteristics of workers in jobs likely to be initially affected by broad social distancing and later by narrower policy tailored to jobs with low risk of disease transmission? We use O NET to construct a measure of the likelihood that jobs can be conducted from home (a variant of Dingel and Neiman, 2020) and a measure of low physical proximity to others at work. We validate the measures by showing how they relate to similar measures constructed using time use data from ATUS. Our main finding is that workers in low-work-from-home or high-physical- proximity jobs are more economically vulnerable across various measures constructed from the CPS and PSID: they are less educated, of lower income, have fewer liquid assets relative to income, and are more likely renters. We further substantiate the measures with behavior during the epidemic. First, we show that MSAs with less pre-virus employment in work-from-home jobs experienced smaller declines in the incidence of `staying-at-home', as measured using SafeGraph cell phone data. Second, we show that both occupations and types of workers predicted to be employed in low work-from-home jobs experienced greater declines in employment according to the March 2020 CPS. For example, non-college educated workers experienced a 4ppt larger decline in employment relative to those with a college degree.




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Electricity and Firm Productivity: A General-Equilibrium Approach -- by Stephie Fried, David Lagakos

The lack of reliable electricity in the developing world is widely viewed by policymakers as a major constraint on firm productivity. Yet most empirical studies find modest short-run effects of power outages on firm performance. This paper builds a dynamic macroeconomic model to study the long-run general equilibrium effects of power outages on productivity. The model captures the key features of how firms acquire electricity in the developing world, in particular the rationing of grid electricity and the possibility of self-generated electricity at higher cost. Power outages lower productivity in the model by creating idle resources, by depressing the scale of incumbent firms and by reducing entry of new firms. Consistent with the empirical literature, the model predicts that the short-run partial-equilibrium effects of eliminating outages are small. However, the long-run general-equilibrium effects are many times larger, supporting the view that eliminating outages is an important development objective.