High Score, Low Pay: Why the So-Called Gig Economy Loves Gamification

Sarah Mason The Guardian
Supporters of Uber and Lyft drivers cheer.
Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts. Incentivizing workers based on individual competition and bonuses isn’t new, but when Sarah Mason became a Lyft driver she found the gig economy had taken gamification to another level.

US Economy Faces Hit from Climate Change, Report Warns

Coral Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis The New York Times
Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

Trying Again for Full Employment

Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg Dollars & Sense
As prominent progressives talk up a federal job guarantee, what can we learn from earlier attempts to legislate full employment?

Your National Anthem

Clint Smith Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy
The poet Clint Smith draws a haunting link between Kaepernick the football player and his own son sitting in a grocery cart.

Ion Drive: The First Flight

Researchers from MIT have flown a plane without moving parts for the first time. It is powered by an ‘ion drive’ which uses high powered electrodes to ionise and accelerate air particles, creating an ‘ionic wind’.

Get This: It's Not 'Both Sides'

Neither party is perfect, but Republicans in Congress have been drifting towards political extremism since long before Trump, and they’re making it impossible for Congress to work the way it’s supposed to.