The House We Live In — Real Life

At the Atlantic earlier this week, Sidney Fussell reported on Airbnb’s policies toward hosts installing cameras to observe their customers and the platform’s apparent ambivalence about enforcing them. As Fussell notes, Airbnb hosts are permitted to have cameras installed in living rooms, common areas, and outdoor spaces, but not bathrooms and sleeping areas. They are…

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Border news: Donald Trump tweets threat to close US-Mexico border “next week” – Vox

President Donald Trump has occasionally threatened to “shut down” the US-Mexico border for months. Nothing has happened. But now, the president is putting an actual timeline on the threat — insisting that he will shut down all or “large portions” of the US-Mexico border “next week” unless Mexico stops all Central American migration into the…

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Why private equity is growing so fast — Quartz

CalPERS, the $360 billion California’s state pension fund, just announced plans to increase its investments in private equity. It’s not hard to see why. Despite the high fees charged by private equity funds, CALPERs claims there are huge payoffs. Its private equity portfolio returned 16.1% in 2017, compared to just 11.5% for its stock portfolio,  and…

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PressThink – PressThink, a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, is written by Jay Rosen.

By request, here’s my post explaining how I view The Correspondent’s decision not to have its headquarters in New York or the US, and to base the English-language operation in Amsterdam. (I am an advisor, and the Membership Puzzle Project, which I lead, is partners with The Correspondent.) You can find the background to this…

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In Pod-Based Community Living, Rent Is Cheap, But Sex Is Banned – Motherboard

Airbnb, once a saviour from overpriced hotels, has become the new overpriced hotels since becoming the short-term accommodation staple. But with the rise of community living and workcations, an alternative might be to just sleep where you cowork. That’s the idea behind PodShare, a coworking space with beds, which has three locations in Los Angeles….

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