Zero­Hedge News

• The Four Day Work Week Is Catch­ing On
  The Four Day Work Week Is Catch­ing On

  As Covid has likely for­ever changed the work land­scape for many com­pa­nies, more and more insti­tu­tions are even start­ing to exper­i­ment with a four day work week.

  Awin Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Adam Ross, who made the change at his com­pany, allow­ing his work­ers to leave early on Fri­days, recently told Bloomberg: “We firmly believe that happy, engaged, and well-​balanced employ­ees pro­duce much bet­ter work. They find ways to work smarter, and they’re just as productive.”

  And its not just Awin. It’s a trend that is grow­ing much larger around the globe. For exam­ple, accord­ing to ZipRecruiter, post­ings that have men­tioned a four day work week have tripled over the last three years, to 62 per 10,000 post­ings. Major com­pa­nies like Unilever are even exper­i­ment­ing with the four day work week. Spain’s gov­ern­ment is look­ing into whether to sub­si­dize the idea and it is even catch­ing on in Japan.

  Will Stronge, direc­tor of research at Auton­omy, said: “The four-​day week is pick­ing up momen­tum. For the large major­ity of firms, reduc­ing work­ing hours is an entirely real­is­tic goal.”

  The ques­tion is will the new sched­ule catch on. Six or seven day work weeks have been the norm since the late nine­teenth cen­tury, Bloomberg notes. Even nowa­days, pop­u­lar bil­lion­aires like Jack Ma have hailed a six day a week work week as “vital for long-​term suc­cess”. Bloomberg also noted that “in the U.K., the Labour Party lost the 2019 gen­eral elec­tion even as it cam­paigned on a pledge to trim the stan­dard work­week to 32 hours within a decade.”

  The push to change work­place envi­ron­ments has been pro­nounced com­ing out of Covid. And the four day work week is show­ing improved pro­duc­tiv­ity, accord­ing to a study from the Uni­ver­sity of Read­ing. There has also been a push to move to a four day work week to “rethink work­ing pat­terns, and reduce energy consumption.”

  Germany’s 2.3-million-member IG Met­all pro­posed the idea when Covid started to wreak havoc on the auto indus­try, as did a group led by for­mer U.K. Shadow Chan­cel­lor John McDon­nell. Renault SA is giv­ing about 13,000 of its work­ers Fri­days off until mid-​August as it looks to cut costs.

  Ross said that at his com­pany, he has an 80 employee task force help­ing with the tran­si­tion — which includes decid­ing which employ­ees will be off when and fig­ur­ing out the logis­tics of hav­ing his finance depart­ment work five days a week.

  “The expe­ri­ence has been so pos­i­tive that he can’t imag­ine going back,” he told Bloomberg. “Com­pa­nies used to make pro­vi­sions for people’s phys­i­cal health but never their men­tal health. I see that chang­ing, and we want to be a dri­ver for it.”

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 03/​05/​2021 — 20:40
• There’s Only One News Story, Repeat­ing Over And Over Again
  There’s Only One News Story, Repeat­ing Over And Over Again

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

  Doing daily com­men­tary on world power dynam­ics feels a lot like star­ing up at the sky watch­ing clouds. Some­times you see a three-​legged pony up there, some­times a gar­goyle, some­times a laugh­ing baby, but really you’re only ever watch­ing tiny water droplets being moved around by atmos­pheric winds. They can take on any num­ber of dif­fer­ent shapes, but no mat­ter how long you lay there star­ing up at them you’re really only ever see­ing one dynamic play out with dif­fer­ent appear­ances from moment to moment.

  The daily news is very much the same, except most con­sumers of news media aren’t aware that they’re watch­ing clouds. They really do think they’re look­ing at a three-​legged pony, a gar­goyle, a laugh­ing baby.

  “Ooh, there’s a doggy!” they squeal and clap their hands. “Ooh! Ooh now it’s a kitty cat!”

  They don’t see the real under­ly­ing dynam­ics, they just see the forms those dynam­ics are tak­ing from moment to moment. They don’t see the water droplets being moved around by the breeze, they just see the shapes.

  Just as clouds are always water droplets in the air no mat­ter what shapes they take, news sto­ries are only ever one dynamic play­ing out with dif­fer­ent appearances.

  There is only ever one news story on any given day, and it is always the same news story: wealthy and pow­er­ful peo­ple seek more wealth and power, and nar­ra­tives are spun to advance these agendas.

  That’s it. That’s all you’re ever see­ing when you read the news. There are sports scores and the occa­sional celebrity death mixed in for enter­tain­ment, but when it comes to major polit­i­cal and gov­ern­men­tal events you’re only ever see­ing the effects of wealthy and pow­er­ful peo­ple work­ing to obtain more wealth and power and nar­ra­tives being spun to pro­mote these agendas.

  Today it’s the Demo­c­ra­tic Party killing the $15 min­i­mum wage, protests in Haiti, US elec­toral shenani­gans in Ecuador, bomb­ings and sanc­tions on Syria, China bad, Rus­sia bad. Appear­ances which taken indi­vid­u­ally at first glance look like break­ing news sto­ries, but when exam­ined closely and inte­grated into the big pic­ture are actu­ally the exact same dynam­ics that were play­ing out yes­ter­day with slightly dif­fer­ent shapes. Tomor­row those same dynam­ics will play out again in dif­fer­ent appear­ances. The shapes are dif­fer­ent, but it’s always water droplets in the air.

  It’s the exact same news story play­ing out over and over and over again, day after day after day. Alarm clock goes off at six AM, Sonny and Cher sing “I Got You Babe”, and Bill Mur­ray wakes up to Ground­hog Day once again.

  “Well it looks like Jibby Jorp­son is set to be the new leader, some­how staving off an early chal­lenge from the pop­u­lar social­ist can­di­date,” reports the news man. “In other news, the osten­si­bly left-​wing party will be unable to help the work­ing class due to bliff blaff bloffa rea­sons, a dan­ger­ous dic­ta­tor in a cru­cial geostrate­gic region urgently needs to be removed from power because wid­dle did­dle doo­dad, and com­ing up: do we need more inter­net cen­sor­ship to pre­vent wakka dakka dingdong?”

  Next morn­ing. Alarm clock. “I Got You Babe”, Bill Mur­ray, Ground­hog Day again.

  “Well it looks like Miggy Morp­son is set to be the the new leader, some­how staving off an early chal­lenge from the pop­u­lar social­ist can­di­date,” reports the news man. “In other news, the osten­si­bly left-​wing party will be unable to help the work­ing class due to wing wang wappa rea­sons, a dan­ger­ous dic­ta­tor in a cru­cial geostrate­gic region urgently needs to be removed from power because kooka kakka keeka, and com­ing up: do we need more inter­net cen­sor­ship to pre­vent yope yap yimmy?”

  Over and over and over again. And over and over and over. The excuses change, the nar­ra­tive spin changes, the com­po­nent parts of the agen­das change, but it’s only ever the same one story: wealthy and pow­er­ful peo­ple seek more wealth and power, and nar­ra­tives are spun to advance these agendas.

  Once you see the clouds as clouds, you never again get con­fused about what those shapes in the sky really are. You see dif­fer­ent iter­a­tions of the exact same dynamic where you used to see indi­vid­ual break­ing news stories.

  When you have this insight and real­ize it’s always the same story play­ing out over and over again, there’s a com­mon temp­ta­tion to give in to despair and bit­ter­ness. Maybe you keep fight­ing, but you do it with a bored, jaded and entirely unin­spired mentality.

  It doesn’t need to be this way though. Just because the fight isn’t hap­pen­ing the way you used to imag­ine doesn’t mean it’s hope­less or tedious, it just means you need to look at it dif­fer­ently. You don’t have a 50-​fight career against 50 dif­fer­ent oppo­nents who you fought for 10 rounds each, you have a one-​fight career against a sin­gle oppo­nent who you’ve been fight­ing for 500 rounds.

  Just because the fight is longer than you once thought and the oppo­nent much more resilient than you once thought doesn’t mean that one long fight is with­out end, or that it is unwinnable. It just means it looks dif­fer­ent than it used to. It was ponies and dog­gies, now it’s clouds. You still bite down on your mouth­piece and throw leather with all your strength.

  But it’s impor­tant to do it with focus on the whole. When we oppose rul­ing power struc­tures and the nar­ra­tives that they are using to advance their agen­das, it’s impor­tant to also zoom out and point to their place in the whole.It ben­e­fits no one to treat any of the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the recur­ring one news story as sep­a­rate from all the other arrange­ments: you’ve got to tie it in to the greater dynam­ics of empire and oli­garchy at every oppor­tu­nity. Oth­er­wise you’re just feed­ing into the illu­sion of dog­gies and kit­ties in the sky.

  That’s all we’re ever doing here: try­ing to point to the recur­ring Ground­hog Day story over and over again from as many dif­fer­ent angles as pos­si­ble to help peo­ple see the clouds. We can use indi­vid­ual news sto­ries as illus­tra­tions to show peo­ple the big­ger pic­ture of what’s really going on, but really all we’re ever doing is help­ing them see it all as water droplets arrang­ing in dif­fer­ent shapes from day to day.

  Help enough peo­ple see the big pic­ture, and the fight is as good as won. Then, and only then, does Bill Mur­ray awaken to a new day.

  * * *

  Thanks for read­ing! The best way to get around the inter­net cen­sors and make sure you see the stuff I pub­lish is to sub­scribe to the mail­ing list for at my web­site or on Sub­stack, which will get you an email noti­fi­ca­tion for every­thing I pub­lish. My work is entirely reader-​supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please con­sider shar­ing it around, lik­ing me on Face­book, fol­low­ing my antics on Twit­ter, or throw­ing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Pay­pal. If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also down­load a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Prep­pers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m try­ing to do with this plat­form, click here. Every­one, racist plat­forms excluded, has my per­mis­sion to repub­lish, use or trans­late any part of this work (or any­thing else I’ve writ­ten) in any way they like free of charge.

  Bit­coin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Liked it? Take a sec­ond to sup­port Caitlin John­stone on Patreon!

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 03/​05/​2021 — 20:20
• Japan Super­com­puter Finds Double-​Masking Doesn’t Work
  Japan Super­com­puter Finds Double-​Masking Doesn’t Work

  Many Amer­i­cans are ask­ing them­selves: Is dou­ble mak­ing offer­ing more pro­tec­tion against COVID-​19 than a sin­gle mask?

  To answer that ques­tion, we ask read­ers: Does any­one wear two condoms?

  The answer is prob­a­bly no. But mem­bers of the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and at least one state gov­er­nor are tout­ing the extra ben­e­fits of dou­ble masking.

  Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief med­ical advi­sor to the pres­i­dent and the direc­tor of the National Insti­tute of Allergy and Infec­tious Dis­eases, ini­tially said, “there’s no data that indi­cates that that is going to make a dif­fer­ence.” He then flip-​flopped, say­ing that the CDC is inves­ti­gat­ing “whether two masks may be bet­ter than one” and added that “it makes com­mon sense”… and added that the rea­son they have not rec­om­mended it until now is that “they are a science-​based organization.”

  Fauci then added, unsci­en­tif­i­cally, “if one mask serves as a phys­i­cal bar­rier, it makes com­mon sense, and cer­tainly can’t hurt and might help to wear two masks.”

  This week, Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som also doubled-​down (lit­er­ally) on dou­ble mak­ing fol­low­ing Texas and Mis­sis­sippi actions to go maskless.

  “We will be dou­bling down on mask-​wearing,” said New­som on Thurs­day, “not argu­ing to fol­low the exam­ple of Texas and other states that I think are mak­ing a ter­ri­ble mistake.”

  Accord­ing to Reuters, sci­ence doesn’t bode well for the folks push­ing dou­ble masks.

  A Japan­ese super­com­puter sim­u­la­tion showed this week that wear­ing two lay­ers of masks pro­vided min­i­mal ben­e­fit in block­ing the virus.

  A study released by sci­en­tific research insti­tute Riken and Kobe Uni­ver­sity on Thurs­day con­tra­dict Fauci and Newsom’s rec­om­men­da­tions that dou­ble mask­ing is “com­mon sense.”

  “Researchers used the Fugaku super­com­puter to model the flow of virus par­ti­cles from peo­ple wear­ing dif­fer­ent types and com­bi­na­tions of mask,” accord­ing to Reuters.

  They found a sin­gle surgical-​type mask had 85% effec­tive­ness in block­ing par­ti­cles if worn cor­rectly, and a polyurethane mask was around 89%.

  Researchers said wear­ing two masks doesn’t help because it builds air resis­tance and causes leak­age around the edges.

  “The per­for­mance of dou­ble mask­ing sim­ply does not add up,“wrote lead researcher Makoto Tsubokura.

  In this pre­sen­ta­tion slide sup­plied by the Riken Cen­ter for Com­pu­ta­tional Sci­ences. Red is a loosely fit­ted non-​woven mask. Green is a fit­ted non-​woven mask. Green and brown are a non-​woven mask with a polyurethane one on top. The bar graph illus­trates the “droplet col­lec­tion effi­ciency”. The blue bar shows the results of wear­ing loose-​fit non-​woven (sur­gi­cal) mask. while red shows a fit­ted non-​woven mask, and pur­ple shows a fit­ted non-​woven mask plus polyurethane mask.

  “Wear­ing two masks does not make them twice as effec­tive but only slightly more so,” Tsub­okura added cited by the Asahi Shim­bun newspaper.

  “Wear­ing one non­wo­ven mask is enough, and make sure it is put on prop­erly with­out leav­ing a gap between the fab­ric and the nose.”

  As Japan­To­day notes, the find­ings in part con­tra­dict recent rec­om­men­da­tions from the U.S. Cen­ters of Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC)that two masks were bet­ter than one at reduc­ing a person’s expo­sure to the coronavirus.

  So if two masks don’t work, proven by a Japan­ese super­com­puter, then what is the under­ly­ing agenda by US gov­ern­ment offi­cials who parade them­selves around media out­lets tout­ing dou­ble mak­ing is “com­mon sense”?

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 03/​05/​2021 — 20:00