We need to be careful about what "return to normal" means
"Normal" was not great for a lot of Americans — and we need to do better
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There was a notable sigh of relief last week when we learned that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the White House. But, I couldn’t help but notice how quickly the narrative started to center around one central word: “Normal.”
This is dangerous.
If we’re thinking of “normal” as being something like the political and social climate of 2014/15 or so — I’m not sure a return to normal is tenable, especially with a pandemic still raging across the country.
Closing schools, store fronts, offices, and most everything else has laid bare the severe labor and digital divides in America that, predictably, have especially severe tolls on people of color. Our lack of a significant and meaningful social safety net — let alone a government interested in actually governing — has put immeasurable pressure on hourly workers, shift workers, people in the service industry, newly-minted “essential employees,” and untold others.
But these are not new or unique problems, and Donald Trump didn’t cause them.
Via Pew Research:
Inequality is as old as the country itself, and we need to realize as a country that returning to “normal” as many people think of it means perpetuating a system that, by default, leaves half the country with significantly less opportunity than the other half.
Leaving aside the glaring racial gaps, just look at how rich the rich have become in the last four decades, again via Pew Research:
Since the Great Recession of 2008, it’s been especially bad for anyone other than the top 20% of earners:
All of this is not to mention the myriad other inequalities that are not (directly) economic or financial. Institutional racism, police violence, voter suppression…the list goes on.
Inequality at scale doesn’t just happen, and we need to understand — right now — that we cannot simply “return to normal” because we voted a racist buffoon out of power. We need to roll up our sleeves and create a new normal.
- Sree
Read Something
There is an absolutely heartbreaking story running through this excellent essay by Alex Hern (@alexhern). The story of a man — a loving husband and father of four — who fell down the QAnon rabbit hole and lost his family in the process. No doubt, this will ring almost too on-the-nose for a lot of you who have seen loved ones become beholden to conspiracy theories and worse. Absolutely a must-read.
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Tech Tips from @NewYorkBob: Apple’s New M1 Superchip — More Muscle, Same Money. Or Less!
Each week, veteran tech journalist Robert S. Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him on @newyorkbob.
This is not hyperbole: Apple’s new M1 chip is a game-changer. If it indeed possesses the vast data-processing and video muscle as Apple claimed as it rolled out new products last week, Windows computer makers are in for a sweat-laden 2021.
Instead of using main processors made by Intel Corp. for its new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops and Mac mini desktop, Apple said it would be using the M1 chip, a home-grown, superpowered, all-in-one chip built from the ground up for Macs.
The M1 is a system-on-chip (SoC), which means every essential element of a computer—including the central processing unit (CPU), graphics engine (GPU) and main memory—are within a single chip, not multiple chips connected on a motherboard. The 16-billion-transistor, eight-CPU-core M1, built with a super-thin 5-nanometer process, is designed not just to be fast, but also to minimize data-processing logjams that plague other computer designs.
The result? Double the performance of the old Macs? No. Much, much more.
According to Apple, the CPU in the M1-powered MacBook Air (starts at $1,000) “performs up to 3.5x faster” and its GPU is up to five times faster than those in the previous model, which was by no means a performance slouch.
The M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro (starts at $1,300) boasts a similar step up in muscle, with a CPU and GPU with 2.8x and 5x better performance, respectively, according to Apple. Not only is the M1-enabled Mac mini up to 3x/6x better in CPU/GPU performance than the old model, but the $700 version is also $100 cheaper, said Apple.
To be sure, the M1 chip’s massive power boost won’t mean much for low-power tasks like word processing, e-mail and web surfing, but the M1 can potentially shave hours out of the workday for a photo or video editor and vastly improve the look and feel of even the most graphics-heavy video games.
So, does Apple have a holiday-season winner? Only time, the pockets of pandemic-afflicted consumers and its supply chain at its manufacturing plants will tell.
Subscribe to Something
The way America so uniquely and severely devalues women never ceases to amaze me — and this interview with Jessica Calarco, by Anne Helen Petersen for her “Culture Study” newsletter, really shines a light. There’s a lot to process and dig into in this particular post especially, and it’s very worth your time.
Threads to Follow
If you’re even sparingly on Facebook, you’ve no doubt seen posts declaring a “Day off Facebook” encouraging people to use Parler — basically 4Chan’s deadbeat nephew. It’s yet another echo chamber for right-wingers who claim they are being censored by Facebook and other mainstream social media platforms (they aren’t, at all). So, what is Parler? Well…
Watch Something
2016 seems like it was 47 years ago. Here’s what Trump supporters were saying about Democrats and Hillary Clinton — the same Hillary Clinton who conceded the night of the election and did not file hundreds of frivolous lawsuits. The hypocrisy is deep here, but far from surprising.
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