Original Content

This week’s challenge–Robots vs. Apps: What’s an Organizer To Do?

Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability

Would a universal basic income give you a passion for washing the dishes? One German startup founder wants to find out. I’m willing to let him experiment on my teen and tween.

The story about building a cooperative economy in Jackson, MS is consistently uplifting to me. Here’s more, on how they’re transforming the poorest state in the US.

Sustainable communities that locate intentionally near one another have more support, if something goes wrong in one.

Reputation, reputation, reputation

You say you haven’t seen enough farmers talking about data privacy & protection? You wanna see a guy wearing a tractor hat talk about bleeding edge technology? Done. Apologies—the video gets a little choppy.

Organizing Theory

Voting technology seems like some of the least sexy technology there is. And yet, people strive to make it better, though open source.

In a week where national journalists have been detained by police for covering the increasing militarization of Ferguson, MO—it’s not just every activist who should read the EFF’s updated cell phone guide. Every American should read it. Because you never know when you’ll be caught up in history.

From Partners

Last week, the Steelworkers passed a resolution at their convention promoting worker-owned co-ops. On a related note, USW’s Rob Witherell launched a new blog promoting worker ownership.

Geeking Out

Civic tech sometimes gets a bad rap (reporting potholes? is this the best we can do?), but these five projects are designed to use tech to solve real problems for low-income communities.

Oh, so your government is making you participate in mandatory job search in order to get benefits? Why not hack together a Google Chrome extension that automatically searches for and applies for jobs for you?

What’s Going on in the Workforce?

The Pew Research Center has been asking industry leaders what they think will happen with the future of jobs. Here’s their report (this may be the first white paper I’ve ever seen with suggested tweets embedded in the text).

Workers at a non-union grocery store in MA walked off the job, to protest a shift to a more shareholder-priviligeing form of management. PBS seems perplexed.

Headed to an Aloft hotel near you—the robot butler.

Sure. In the face of job-killing robots, just become a robot investor in order to ensure your economic survival. Sounds easy enough.

Final Thoughts

“even if Baxter is slow, his hourly cost is pennies’ worth of electricity, while his meat-based competition costs minimum wage. A tenth of the speed is still cost-effective, when it’s a hundredth the price.”

I guess I can retire this blog now.