So What, Who Cares (vol 3, issue 41) Who wants an update on three prior stories?
Hello!
The holiday really threw off my publishing schedule -- and so did an unexpected editorial development last week. I submitted a SWWC around updates to prior columns, and got feedback that it's unreasonable to expect readers to remember things I had written prior or to want updates on earlier topics. So I put it to you, the readers: Do you like updates on prior newsletters? After all, most of the things I cover are still going on.
Hit me up via Twitter (@lschmeiser) or email and give me your honest feedback. Thank you.
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The core mission of So What, Who Cares is to provide context around news stories -- to explain what happened, why it matters and who might be affected. It's a deliberate long view, because not all stories worth paying attention to unfold in a day.
With that in mind, there are several news stories I've touched on in previous SWWCs that have continued to develop since I wrote about them. Here are three stories with relevant updates.
The original SWWC: On May 19, I wrote about the 2007 Public Student Loan Forgiveness Program, which the current presidential administration is proposing to ax, thereby affecting at least half a million people in the U.S., many of whom work in jobs that essentially keep our society from descending in chaos -- emergency management; military service; public safety; law enforcement; public interest law services; early childhood education; public service for individuals with disabilities; public service for the elderly; public health; public education; public library services; other school-based services.
The update: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has excoriated the program as-is in a report released on June 25, 2017. The big problem appears to be with FedLoan Servicing, the company that handles processing payments and -- this is key -- educating borrowers on exactly where they are in the loan forgiveness process and how much money they need to keep paying to remain eligible for loan forgiveness.
The timing of the report is unfortunate, as it now gives the Trump administration all sorts of protective cover to ax the program by citing it as "proof" of government waste and incompetence. That FedLoan Servicing is not actually part of the federal government but is part of the financial services provider Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (which is actually part of the Pennsylvania state government) -- well, that may or may not actually enter the public debate.
This whole situation is a reminder that student loan repayment servicers, i.e. the organizations that collect money, are ripe for review by the Education Department, but the current Education Department has just decided to reduce protections for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, and the man picked to head the department's Federal Student Aid program, Arthur Wayne Johnson, used to run a private student loan servicing company. How the department chooses to direct its energies regarding who gets loans and what protections borrowers have remains to be seen.
The original SWWC: On April 14, I wrote about one IBM exec's decision to ban telecommuting and why that was a short-sighted, counterproductive decision. There's plenty of evidence that telecommuting works for both employees and employers: the breaks from commuting mean workers are more likely to be healthy and well-rested, and therefore more productive. For the latter, they're likely to get more hours out of their employees because telecommuters tend to sit there and work until they get stuff done.
The update: In the time since that news dropped, the 2017 State of Telecommuting Report dropped.
Among the key data points: Approximately 3% of all U.S. workers (4 million people) work from home half-time or more, and they tend to take home approximately $4000 more per year than their office-bound counterparts. The reason for the higher salary is likely linked to education and seniority, and suggests that younger workers don't have as many opportunities for flexible or home-based work.
Moreover, telecommuters tend to cost less than on-premises people -- teleworkers who were at home at least half time cost $11,000 less per employee than full-time in-office workers. That finding won't come as a surprise to WordPress -- the online publishing company is closing its San Francisco office because employees never came in.
And finally ...
The original SWWC: On April 10, I wrote about a novel approach to managing invasive species in our waterways -- eating them. At the time, one of the gating factors was the difficulty in getting delicious, non-native meat out of green crabs:
The only hang-up right now is figuring out the crab's molting cycle so they can be sold as soft-shell delicacies. Then, the soft shell green crab be less labor-intensive to prepare, thus raising its desirability in restaurants, which raises demand, which raises a fishing concern's incentive to go out there and denude a local waterway of the invasive species.
The update: I am thrilled to report that the University of Maine has cracked the green crab's shell problem, and the solution to this issue? Empanadas. (Which are a solution to many of life's problems, in my opinion.)
It's not that the good people down east discovered empanadas are delicious. They discovered a low-effort way to extract a very high percentage of crab meat -- thereby removing one of the biggest obstacles to adopting the food in restaurants, and hopefully leading to increasing demand. Here is what the researchers found:
Researchers tried a process called “mechanical separation,” something that hasn’t been done with green crabs before. Using a deboner—the piece of machinery that separates the last bits of meat from the bone in chicken and fish—the researchers tried shelling the crabs without the use of human hands. The results were really positive: they got about 55 percent of each crab’s weight back in meat, which, compared to a blue crab’s 35 percent range, is pretty good.
The resulting minced crab meat can be used for the aforementioned empanadas, as well as crab dip, crab ravioli or any recipe where the appearance of the meat matters far less than its mere delicious presence.
Hooray for the problem-solving results of academic research! Here's hoping subsequent generations of brainy students have the financial means to join the good fight in finding solutions to real problems.
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Your pop culture recommendation for the day: I am always here for a thorough deconstruction of the "French girls do everything better" editorial cliche -- and if you don't believe it's a hackneyed approach to a topic, take a trip through this list of 97 articles on how to do darn near anything like a French girl.
So if you have also rolled your eyes at exhortations on how you, a schlumpy American lady, can live like you are instead the resident of a nation with 16 weeks guaranteed paid parental leave + government bonuses for each child + affordable health care + state-licensed nannies + a national child-care system + five paid weeks of vacation annually (all of these things are available for French residents) ...
... Please read this wonderful Racked piece on the potent profitability of the French-girl trope.
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