The news to know for Thursday, December 9th, 2021!
What to know about President Biden's latest plan to fight climate change and why he's already facing some pushback.
Also, new research about Covid-19 booster shots and another tool for some Americans to avoid getting sick.
Plus, a record-breaking gap between job openings and the workers available to fill them, why the government is investigating certain video games, and who made this year's list of Most Powerful Women.
Today, votes will be counted in the effort to unionize three Starbucks stores in Buffalo, New York, with the result expected this afternoon. If that vote is successful, they would be the first unionized Starbucks in the country. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh joins us again to discuss labor movements like this one and what’s driving them.
And in headlines: Pfizer said its vaccine booster shot can protect against the Omicron variant, Germany swore in Olaf Scholz as its new chancellor, and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin apologized for going clubbing after being exposed to coronavirus.
For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday
It’s a topic that few people know about, but that has far-reaching consequences.
Trial lawyers across the country are cozying up to the left, advancing their radical agendas while lining their pockets with government money. The result? The average consumer pays the price.
"It affects [consumers] in part because you've got governments handing out big-deal contracts to politically active people on probably the wrong side of the aisle," says O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers. "And I think that alone should be something that people pay attention to."
"But on a basic level," Skinner adds, "these contracts are the kind of things where there's millions of dollars that are often not tied to individual cases, not tied to case outcomes, where consumers get money."
Skinner joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss how widespread the relationship between trial lawyers and the left is, as well as offer solutions for conservatives.
We also cover these stories:
President Joe Biden says he won’t unilaterally send U.S. troops to defend Ukraine from a Russian invasion.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol will pursue contempt charges against former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for failing to appear for a deposition.
California is positioning itself to be an abortion sanctuary if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Michigan state Senator Rosemary Bayer has been fighting for years to get safe storage laws on the books in her home state. In the wake of the shooting at Oxford High School, a school that sits in her district, her mission has become that much more urgent.
Guest: Rosemary Bayer is a state senator in Michigan. She represents the northern suburbs of Detroit.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Paris Marx is joined by Stephen Diehl to discuss why technologists are divided on crypto, what’s wrong with blockchain, why crypto assets are scams, and why web3 is a rebranding effort.
Stephen Diehl is software engineer and crypto skeptic based in London. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @smdiehl.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.
Baratunde knows what is healthy to eat or not, thanks to the required nutrition labels on our food. But how do we know the ingredients in the algorithms and AI we depend on are safe to use? Baratunde speaks with Kasia Chmielinksi about the Data Nutrition Project, which helps data scientists, developers, and product managers assess the viability, health, and quality of the data that feeds their algorithms and influences our decisions daily.
Guest: Kasia Chmielinski
Bio: Co-Founder of the Data Nutrition Project, an affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, senior research advisor at the Partnership on AI
Online: The Data Nutrition Project website; Kasia on Twitter @kaschm
Show Notes + Links
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We are grateful to Kasia Chmielinski for joining us! Follow them at @kaschm on Twitter, or find more of their work at datanutrition.org.
ACTIONS
- PERSONALLY REFLECT
Like people, machines are shaped by the context in which they were created. So if we think of machines and algorithmic systems as children who are learning from us - their parents - what kind of parents do we want to be? How do we want to raise our machines to be considerate, fair, and to build a better world than the one we are in today?
Michigan state Senator Rosemary Bayer has been fighting for years to get safe storage laws on the books in her home state. In the wake of the shooting at Oxford High School, a school that sits in her district, her mission has become that much more urgent.
Guest: Rosemary Bayer is a state senator in Michigan. She represents the northern suburbs of Detroit.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
We kept ignoring DAOs and web3 hoping it would go away, but sadly it hasn’t. So we pick apart each part of the acronym—decentralized, autonomous, organization—and discuss the techno-politics of their promise and practice. We get into blockchain, smart contracts, and corporate governance.
Some stuff we reference:
••• Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law | Karen E.C. Levy https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/107
••• DAOs are interesting, likely, and terrifying | Jason Prado: https://venturecommune.substack.com/p/daos-are-interesting-likely-and-terrifying
••• Zealots of the Blockchain | David Golumbia: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/zealots-of-the-blockchain-golumbia
••• Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks, and visual features | Matthieu Nadini et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00053-8
••• Digital extraction: Blockchain traceability in mineral supply chains | Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262982100041X
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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)
