And I am really curious what people make of his conclusion.
The comments speak volumes. "Amazon helped keep us alive during Covid, delivering a variety of goods to us 2 or 3 times a week for 12 months. And even tho both of us have had vaccinations, we remain wary of going to crowded, enclosed spaces, and therefore continue to use Amazon."
"Without Amazon... I'm not sure I would have survived the last year as comfortably as I did. Between them, I have hardly been in contact with humans outside of my family bubble in over a year."
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Glad to see Amazon's @JayCarney is now engaging in the growing conversation around FULFILLMENT. nytimes.com/2021/04/16/boo… A few quick thoughts in response:
.@JayCarney writes, "The book somehow casts Amazon in the role of villain, ignoring the fact that Amazon has been a positive force in the US economy, creating 400,000 much-needed jobs last year alone.”
It’s precisely this extraordinary growth and dominance that is now at issue.
I mean, I never could've imagined when I set out to write FULFILLMENT that the company, and the way of life it represents, would become so vastly more dominant in a single year.
And remember: those warehouse jobs have replaced countless lost brick & mortar ones. See: Chapter 8.
"Harvard researchers who have been following 224 children ages 7 to 15 found two-thirds had clinically significant symptoms of anxiety and depression btwn Nov 2020 and Jan 2021. That is a huge jump from 30% with anxiety and depression before the pandemic." wsj.com/articles/pande…
"Particularly delicate are the years from 8 to 14. The years around puberty are ones of greater neuroplasticity, when the brain is particularly sensitive to external events and learning experiences."
"Michaela Voss, director of the eating disorders center in KC, says admissions for kids w/ eating disorders have risen substantially. With many schools shut and sports canceled, some children felt 'there was nothing else to do but exercise and stare at their bodies in mirrors.'"
This is a good @jonathanchait on Mitch McConnell's shift on corporate speech: nymag.com/intelligencer/…. I would note, tho, that it's not the case that no one doubted Mitch's sincerity when it came to defending campaign $$ as speech. "The Cynic" laid that bare as a tactical gambit!
Here fwiw is the relevant section from The Cynic about how McConnell came to adopt the "campaign $$ is speech" argument against campaign finance reform. It was pure political calculus. 1/3
Many nursing homes are still barring physical contact between vaccinated residents and visiting family members. washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/…
"All employees and residents have been vaccinated. But the facility’s medical experts still say there are too many unanswered questions to permit close physical contact, including whether a vaccinated resident could catch the virus from a visitor & transmit it asymptomatically."
"Exeter has 1,100 students and a $1.3 billion endowment. Andover, which has 1,150 students, is on track to take in $400 million in its current capital campaign. And all of this cash, glorious cash, comes pouring into the countinghouse 100 percent tax-free."
"Less than 2% of students attend [private] schools. But 24% of Yale’s class of 2024 attended [one]. At Princeton, 25%. At Brown and Dartmouth, 29% In the past 5 yrs, Dalton sent a third of its graduates to the Ivy League. Harvard-Westlake, in LA sent 45 kids to Harvard alone."
Major pandemic problem: move far from the big city to flee the coronavirus, end up somewhere far from high-quality interior designers to renovate your new home.
Solution: fly out an interior designer thousands of miles to do the work, after Zoom consults. wsj.com/articles/with-…
“We wanted a Hamptons-meets-Scandinavian vibe."
"Homeowners living far from urban design centers—or their favorite interior designers—are taking the extra time and effort to bridge the distance gap. That means creating a sleek New York look or a relaxed L.A. aesthetic in unexpected places."