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Will the Gig Economy Make the Office Obsolete?

Diane Mulcahy Harvard Business Review
Study after study after study demonstrate that independent, remote workers are more productive, satisfied, and engaged than their office-bound colleagues. Recent surveys find that workers, freed from the constraints of office life, report higher levels of satisfaction and greater productivity. These results aren’t surprising since remote work eliminates the wasted time of commuting and the stress of constant exposure to office politics, interruptions and meetings.

How Immigrants Became Criminals

Alan A. Aja and Alejandra Marchevsky Boston Review
By focusing on the mistreatment of “good” immigrants, advocates miss the bigger point that everyone should have the right to due process.

Why Progressives Should Care About US Agricultural Policy

Mark Willsey Truthout
For the progressive movement to make inroads in communities like mine, it needs to put forward a serious plan for how the US government can stop subsidizing corporate farms and instead return the land to small family farmers who work the land. Farmers should not have to farm 20,000 acres of rented land just to make a living.

'There’s a Smell of Treason in the Air'

Michael Winship Common Dreams
Not only did Comey verify that the FBI was actively investigating Trump and his associates, he also flatly denied on behalf of his agency and the Justice Department that prior to January’s inauguration now-former President Obama had ordered eavesdropping on Trump Tower. As presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told The Washington Post, “There’s a smell of treason in the air."

Get Out: A Real American Horror Story

J. Hoberman The New York Review of Books
Get Out opens with a familiar horror-movie trope. Someone walking alone down a dark street stalked by a mysterious force. That the setting is an idyllic suburb, the someone is a young, increasingly panicked black man, and the predator is driving a white car gives the scenario an unmistakable reality. The scene grows disturbing. You may flash on Trayvon Martin. That the black youth is not shot but rather abducted is a dreamlike condensation of the movie to come.

Media Bits & Bytes - Three Card Monte Edition

Portside
Palestinians Blocked from Getting Smartphone Service; NSA Technology Simply Too Old to Search; Who Owns Your Data When You Die?; New Computing Physics Soon to Emerge from NASA-Google Partnership; GED Gets a Digital Makeover and Faces Competition

Another Citizens United—but Worse

Jeffrey Toobin The New Yorker
Citizens United was not an aberration for this Court. It emerged from a definite view about the intersection of campaigns and free speech.

Strikes, Alliances, and Survival

Harold Meyerson The American Prospect
Out of sheer existential necessity, then, unions have entered a period of experimentation. The fast-food campaigns that SEIU is backing won’t plausibly conclude with a contract with McDonald’s and Wendy’s. The more likely scenario is that those protesting will try to win minimum-wage increases for workers—either generally or in particular industries—at the city level, either through the vote of city councils or of voters at the polls.