#and no government is doing anything about very obvious price gouging of food

[awkward-teabag]

Things listed that they spent the money on:

Rent/Housing

Durable Goods

Furniture

Food

Transit

Used Car

Clothing

It was a small study and they selected away from people who may have used the money on "temptation goods" (e.g. drugs and alcohol), but it goes to show that homeless people aren't a monolith who, as a whole, are just going to spend that money on booze and blow thus should never have access to cash because "they're too irresponsible".

Unless you talk to people, you have no idea why they're homeless. And with the cost of living crisis in Vancouver, where this was done, this is all the truer. Supports are far between, there's few mental health services (unless you can pay for it), and people working two jobs can still be priced out of the housing market.

Not that people with addictions shouldn't also have the dignity of housing, clean clothes, and a full belly, but the idea that homeless people are on the street "because they're junkies and didn't bootstrap hard enough to get off the street" is pervasive in BC and used an excuse for there to be no government support and to feel appalled someone dared ask them for change.

The participants who were given cash were compared with 65 homeless people who did not get the payment. Those who got the payment did not spend more money on "temptation goods," spent 99 fewer days homeless, increased their savings and spent less time in shelters which "saved society" $777 per person, according to a news release from UBC.

[lizardrosen]

Oooh, a Meme!

I was tagged by @pilferingapples​

1. Answer the questions given to you by the tagger.

2. Post 11 questions of your own

3. Tag 11 people.

Questions

1.– You can have any three superpowers you want, no unpleasant side effects, no pesky physics ruining things, Standard comic-book-Supers level full power. What are you picking?

Teleportation because it can double as flying if I just teleport from one place in the air to somewhere very close, over and over!

Shielding powers because sometimes I get extremely touch-averse and too Anxious to be able to articulate that fact, so I could just Stop people from doing the thing.

Fire powers because I like the way fire looks!

2.- Do you use your powers for Good, or for Awesome?

For Awesome, definitely, but Doing Good is a form of awesome, so there’s definitely overlap.

3.- I’ve seen it before but I love the question: if you could wear whatever you wanted, with social judgement/ practicality of any sort being a complete nonissue, what would you wear?

I would make it be less of a Complete Pain to put on makeup, and then I would contour my face to look more masculine, so I can be the nonbinary icon I know myself to be. Or I’d generally make my clothes exude an aura of “NOT A GIRL” so people don’t misgender me no matter how frilly my skirts. (I realize this isn’t exactly an answer to the question, but I can live with that)

4.-What’s your favorite holiday?

Halloween!! This year I was less active than usual on tumblr for most of October, so it may not have been obvious but I LOVE Halloween and all the traditions involved.

5. What would your Ideal Home be like (again, cost and physics and practicality not an issue)? 

Somewhere by the sea, with a garden gate that makes you forget there is an outside world. An internet connection that never fails, and secret passages all through the house, and cozy reading nooks on every floor.

6-If you could cast yourself into any AU setting, and have any role you wanted, what would it/you be?

Man, there are so many reasons I can’t actually be a space ambassador, but in theory I would love to help bring worlds and people together in a way that respects everyone’s needs.

7-You get to make one law that will absolutely be implemented on a national level for at least ten years, full government support guaranteed. What is it?

Price gouging on medicines and treatments/equipment is now banned. People only need to pay the amount that it actually costs to make and implement these things that allow them to live. (I would have my advisers figure out how to also make it fair to the inventors involved, so they’re not screwed over by capitalism)

8- Is there a historical/cultural figure you think gets a bad rap? Maligned, misrepresented, unfairly forgotten? What would you like to say about them?

I’m SO SURE that there’s someone who perfectly fits this question but right now I have no idea who that would be, so for now I’ll just say that Anti-Stratfordians are TERRIBLE AND WRONG, and also that Shakespeare was bi as heck.

9- How would you describe your Aesthetic, if you absolutely had to?

As a person: Domestic Gay. As a writer: Stories Contemplating Themselves

10- What is your favorite monster? Individual or Kind, either way!

Monster girls!! Women who discover their own power and turn it back on the society and individuals who always told them they couldn’t do anything.

11-  You get one kind of magic –necromancy, cooking-related, etc– what would it be?

Nature magic! I want to make things grow (or die) and I want animals to love me.

My questions:

1. What time period would you most like to live in, and why?

2. What one thing about that time period would you change to make it more comfortable to live in?

3. What book will you never get tired of reading? (You can choose up to three if one is too hard)

4. What do you wish you could say (or could have said) to someone you’re no longer in touch with?

5. Time, money, and practicality not being an issue, what skill do you want to learn?

6. What is going on in your life that would have surprised you to hear about five years ago?

7. What school subject did you really enjoy that you no longer use?

8. What is your favorite kind of precipitation? (Fog and mist both count for the purposes of this question)

9. Who or what haunts you?

10. Name three things you like about yourself!

11. Favorite breakfast food?

Tagging: @crossgartered, @tropesarenotbad, @ifigaveyouthemoon, @crispin-cas9, @theweefreewomen, @sibella, @originalperidot, and anyone else who wants to do it because i’m terrible at tagging people!

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

20 Mar 2020: What the Co-op is doing about coronavirus. Working remote. Speed trumps perfection.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

What the Co-op is doing about coronavirus

Co-op is creating jobs: talk to staff in store, or look online. All of the supermarkets and convenience stores are mobilising - most need more staff right now. And:

“All our stores have a dedicated shopping hour for those at higher risk and the people who care for them. Check with your local store for details.”

Here’s an update from Co-op CEO Steve Murrells on how the Co-op Group is responding to the virus. The virus is obviously affecting *everything* now, but an organisation that provides grocery, health, funeral, insurance and academic services and whose underlying purpose is community can play a particularly important role.

“I’ve never known anything like what we’re experiencing right now. I know you’ll be as worried as I am about the health of your loved ones and the livelihoods of those around you. The Co-op’s got a critical role to play in supporting our members, customers, and colleagues as well as local communities across the country. My heartfelt commitment to you is that we will work through this, together, in the most co-operative, responsible and compassionate way we can – just as you would expect us to.”

This bit is great:

“So, we’re stepping in and giving 6,500 students that have free school meals at our 25 Co-op Academy schools a £20 voucher for every week of unplanned closure. This can be spent in any Co-op food store. But it’s a drop in the ocean when you consider there are 1.4 million kids on free school meals in this country. So that’s why today, I’ve also asked the Government to lead a nationwide effort to make sure no child goes hungry just because they can’t go to school.”

Related:

Earlier this week, supermarkets asked shoppers to continue their normal patterns of shopping behaviour in order to limit strain on supermarket supply chains. Many are taking steps so all customers get 

Ocado says its online sales volume doubled, and has switched off its website.

Good responses

Mobile networks remove data charges for online NHS coronavirus advice - explained further here.

Coronavirus: Postcard bid to help self-isolating neighbours - more generally, there are many stories of communities stepping up to support and help their neighbours. And some neighbourhood platforms are trying to encourage this: Nextdoor adds features to help neighbors during the coronavirus crisis.

Amazon-owned Audible has made hundreds of children’s audiobooks free.

Here are financial things you can do if your family is struggling - mortgage holidays and so on.

All of this (and more) is exactly what’s needed: people acting in the interest of wider society (self-isolating etc). Organisations working to help people in difficult situations. Communities working together. 

But disasters don’t always bring the best out in people. Company X buys patents from discredited company Y and uses them to sue company Z which is doing COVID-19 testing. Unions say Amazon is unfairly asking staff to work overtime. A hand-sanitiser stockpiler is probed for price gouging (the guy tries to, er, wash his hands of the scheme after getting caught by Amazon and local authorities). 

Working remote

Of course not all jobs can be done remotely. But some can, so many organisations are learning how to be as remote as they can, as fast as they can. There’s a question about how to do remote working well: many obvious things, like helping team members get set up, encouraging them to take breaks, and allowing people more flexibility around when they work, particularly for those with children now at home. Social media is full of remote work handbooks that companies are helpfully sharing.

But there are also some less obvious things, like taking the time to check on team health. Learning new rituals and gestural languages for videocalls. And assuming lower productivity, because video calls are harder to concentrate through than meetings, and everyone is trying to work in what are very challenging times. Perhaps teams that are able to put things into queues (and other asynchronous, remote-friendly patterns) will find it easier than teams that try to faithfully recreate the experience of being in the office.

Related: interesting piece from BT about changes in their network traffic: “as people started to work from home more extensively, we’ve seen weekday daytime traffic increase 35-60% compared with similar days on the fixed network, peaking at 7.5Tb/s. This is still only around half the average evening peak”. And: “5% decrease in mobile data traffic, as a lot of people are connecting their mobiles to their home WiFi, rather than using the cellular network. Mobile traffic is becoming more evenly distributed across the country, as people travel into urban hubs less frequently. Roaming traffic is falling by about 10% per day, with a 55% drop over the last 5 days.”

So we might say that the limitations of working remote aren’t so much  internet bandwidth as cognitive bandwidth.

Speed trumps perfection

Here’s the World Health Organisation’s leader of Health Emergencies Programme: 

“If you need to be right before you move, you will never win… speed trumps perfection. Everyone is afraid of the consequence of error. But the greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure.”

This is going to be quoted endlessly by fans of “move fast and break things” in the tech industry in the next decade, not least because viruses and emergency response will be metaphors put to use in every industry.

Other news

Apple fined record €1.1bn by French competition regulator - for “price alignment”.

Slack stats: “The average paid user spends more than nine hours each workday connected to Slack, including around 90 minutes of active use. That adds up to more than 5 billion actions taken each week in Slack”.

Electric scooters to get green light to go on Britain's public roads - get ready for Deliverooters.

Did the term “enterprise software” come from Star Trek?

Co-op Digital news and events

The team at Federation House: 

“We have now postponed all events and will not be taking bookings until further notice. This is in line with the government’s advice relating to the coronavirus pandemic. We will keep our website updated with any new information about events and bookings. We wish you good health and hope to be able to welcome you to The Federation soon.”

Internal events: show and tells will be happening online - check in with the teams in case these dates and times change.

Delivery community of practice - Mon 23 Mar 1.30pm.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 25 Mar 2pm.

Data management show & tell - Thu 26 Mar 2.30pm.

Membership show & tell - Fri 27 Mar 3pm.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletter’s typing entity @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.