Puerto Rico’s Future Clouded Under New Debt Restructuring Plan

Ed Morales OpenDemocracy
Puerto Ricans participate in a silent protest in New York.
Last month, Puerto Rico’s federally imposed Fiscal Oversight and Management Board announced its debt-restructuring plan that predictably will expand draconian austerity measures while ignoring policies that would promote economic sustainability.

Noon in a three star restaurant

Marge Piercy Chiron Review
“He does not represent us,” writes poet Marge Piercy about the misogynist Senator, but knows the “clichés that light up brains.”

The Radical Guidebook Embraced by Google Workers and Uber Drivers

Noam Scheiber The New York Times
Technology and ride-hailing workers embrace lessons from a book based on ideas associated with a labor group, the IWW, from the early 20th century. The book has provided a blueprint for organizing collective power without a formal union.

How to Tax Our Way Back to Justice

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman The New York Times
The good news is that we can fix tax injustice, right now. There is nothing inherent in modern technology or globalization that destroys our ability to institute a highly progressive tax system. The choice is ours.

Why Deep-Learning AIs Are so Easy to Fool

Douglas Heaven Nature
Brilliant at what they do, taken into unfamiliar terrain Deep Neural Networks are fundamentally brittle. AI researchers say they are making progress in fixing the flaws, but acknowledge that they’re still groping for new techniques.

Understanding the Two Types of Whistleblowers

Jefferson Morley Independent Media Institute
Maybe the specter of a lawless president and the example of an insider legal whistleblower who called him out will prod Congress to start creating more protections for those who want to speak truth to power. We need more of those protections.