Official Richart Ruddie Blog - Internet Entrepreneur

How Could We Keep America Clean Like Singapore?

Walking around in Singapore you notice something. There's no trash and littering. It's a blight to walk outside your door and find broken beer bottles and Wendy's trash because somebody didnt want to not only recycle but didnt even take the time to find a trash can. So when you enter Singapore you wonder could the United States ever create a model and campaign to keep the streets clean and fine people who pollute?

Well I asked our friends over at OpenAI on what they thought and here is their answer on how to keep the streets clean with a comprehensive approach:

Enacting laws and fines to promote cleanliness and reduce littering in the USA would involve a comprehensive approach involving several steps. Here's a general outline of how such measures could be implemented:

1. Legislation: The first step would be to introduce legislation at the federal or state level to address littering and promote cleanliness. This legislation would define littering offenses, establish penalties and fines, and provide guidelines for enforcement.

2. Public Awareness and Education: Launching extensive public awareness campaigns is crucial to educate the population about the importance of cleanliness and the negative impacts of littering. These campaigns can utilize various mediums such as television, radio, social media, and community events to reach a wide audience and promote behavior change.

3. Strengthening Enforcement: To effectively enforce laws against littering, law enforcement agencies need to be adequately equipped and trained. Allocating resources to hire and train additional officers dedicated to monitoring and enforcing cleanliness laws would be necessary. This could involve increasing patrols, installing surveillance cameras in public areas, and utilizing technology for monitoring and evidence collection.

4. Strict Penalties and Fines: Establishing strict penalties and fines for littering offenses can act as a deterrent. The fines should be significant enough to discourage littering behavior and cover the costs associated with enforcement and cleanup. Graduated fines, where penalties increase for repeat offenders, can be implemented to ensure accountability.

5. Efficient Waste Management Infrastructure: Investing in waste management infrastructure is crucial for reducing littering. Providing easily accessible and well-maintained public trash bins, recycling facilities, and encouraging responsible waste disposal practices can help discourage littering and promote cleanliness.

6. Community Involvement: Engaging the community in cleanliness initiatives fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility. Encouraging neighborhood clean-up drives, involving schools and local organizations, and establishing volunteer programs can create a collective effort to maintain cleanliness.

7. Continuous Monitoring and Evaluation: Regular monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of these measures are essential. Collecting data on littering rates, conducting surveys, and seeking feedback from the public can help identify areas for improvement and inform policy adjustments.

It's important to note that implementing and enforcing such laws and fines would require political will, resources, and cooperation from various stakeholders, including government agencies, law enforcement, and the general public.

Top New York Times Stories from 2022

Here are some really great stories handpicked from the New York Times editors looking back on 2022. This is copied and pasted from the morning newsletter.

 

Good reads

Whales rarely sing more loudly than war.

In the fight for finite reader attention, big stories win: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Queen Elizabeth II’s death and rare protests in China. But this news, while important, can overshadow good stories — about whales passing their songs to each other across oceans, lyric poetry at M.M.A. fights or the fading art of embalming.

So like we have in years past, the Morning team asked editors around the Times newsroom for the articles, podcasts and videos that didn’t get the attention they deserved this year. These are their selections.

Enjoy these 25 stories:

The world’s longest-running tattoo business draws saints in Jerusalem. Try the “joy workout.” Raccoons are like high school students: The shy ones come out ahead in the long run. Motorcycles race at impossible angles on a carnival’s Wall of Death. (We loved these photos.) A case for falling back in love with the Walkman. “I believe in Jesus, guns and babies”: More than 100 Republican midterm ads used firearms to galvanize voters. A poetry festival celebrating a fading language drew stadium-size crowds in India. New York City officials released a video on how to survive a nuclear attack. It was poorly received. YouTubers are highlighting the vanishing role of Black people in horse racing. These charts show how far the Supreme Court has shifted to the right. Rock climbing is drawing tourists to Malawi. A professor spreads the hashtag #yes2meat, pushing back against climate science. The meat industry is funding his work. A police chief is pushing to take over a public library in a central California farming town.

Car redesign has changed Formula 1. The owners of the celebrity-packed Carbone in New York are trying to replicate their restaurant’s success on (almost) every continent. He set aside just 30 minutes for his first meeting with a woman who, unknown to him, was an Ethiopian princess. This year, they married.

A stainless steel fence is a status symbol for some Asian homeowners in New York. The Daily Wire is trying to turn Nashville into a Hollywood for conservatives. Hundreds of school counselors describe how the pandemic has gripped children with anxiety. Is Hollywood regressing after its #MeToo reckoning? A Black community thrived for decades despite segregation and economic hardship. Could residents rebuild after a wildfire? Listen to conversations with Afghan girls about life under Taliban rule.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote an Appalachian elegy — hillbillies not included. This is what it’s like to navigate the internet with limited vision. Soft launch your relationship on social media.

This Week in Tech Updates from Richart Ruddie

Google ads and Google as a company is finally getting serious about privacy. They've been tightening up and making changes to Analytics and working on a cookie free future and this past week they just released this announcement: "New data protection laws, which apply to the collection and processing of personal information, will be coming into effect in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah in 2023." While we're at it and dealing with privacy issues Google settled with 40 out of 50 states here over tracking issues and is paying a few hundred million in fines. Read about the not so not evil company practices here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/google-settles-location-history-lawsuit-with-40-states-will-pay-392-million/ 

CBS News got off of Twitter for what they said was security purposes and then got back on a day later. It's been purported that their followers are fake or that they have extremely low engagement on Twitter and that may be to fraudulent followers or bots.

If you use Wix for SEO or have client sites that are created on Wix then this resource SEO guide released this week may also be helpful: https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/manage-seo-edit-by-page

Sucuri is a popular wordpress plugin  and they have just uncovered a WIDESPREAD hack that appears to be designed to improve someone's SEO performance which is a tricky and clever hack to send malware using black hat hacking techniques. https://blog.sucuri.net/2022/11/massive-ois-is-black-hat-redirect-malware-campaign.html )

Artificial Intelligence news for the week courtesy of The University of Cambridge states that "claims AI can boost wordplace diversity are 'spurious and dangerous'"https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/claims-ai-can-boost-workplace-diversity-are-spurious-and-dangerous-researchers-argue  and here's some more cool AI News: https://www.engadget.com/mit-century-old-differential-equation-liquid-ai-computational-bottleneck-160035555.html 

QUANTA MAGAZINE PROFILES A NEW "energy-efficient [AI] chip" that promises to revolutionize chip design and artificial inteligence research https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-brain-inspired-chip-can-run-ai-with-far-less-energy-20221110/ ). The chips use (relatively newly developed) Resistive RAM memory and the chips are called NeuRRAM (neuromorphic resistive RAM). These memory chips operate in ANALOG rather than DIGITAL mode, which is revolutionary. Analog computers predate digital computers but they didn't have memory systems like RAM.

Now companies are laying off en masse and doing a RIF which means a Reduction in Force or workforce for those who keep on hearing about these RIF's and had wondered what the acronym meant.  These companies over-hired during the pandemic, expecting a much larger economic bounce back that was pent up with money flooded into the system and for the last year we've been bearing the outpouring of that money.

So what does the future hold? Whatever you make of it.

Journalist Studio Reference Guide

Google has released a reference guide for journalists that provides some really fantastic resources. They include a DDOS service as an alternative to Cloudflare for those running political sites, Tilegrams for those who want to build cartograms for map data, a fast fact check explorer, a Google Data GIF maker, and Flourish a data visualization tool for data with pre-set templates. Will be interesting to see articles online from the NY Times, Washington Post, ESPN, Politico, and other places where you recognize these solutions that Google has provided.

For more information check out the journalists studio.

My favorite section that a stats nerd can really got list in is the Public Data Directory

For access to the WTO, ICT, IMF, and other stat databases visit:

https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory

- Richart Ruddie

Bloomberg News Faux Pas Inuit called Intuit

One of those things you may see on a late night show or news blooper reels is Bloomberg News accidently calling native inuits "Intuit" like the quickbooks software.

See the news blooper below. Inuit is not the same as intuit but honest mistake that I hope didnt offend anybody.

"Intuit people's Arctic. Science in the Arctic..."

Department of Homeland Security Updates - Why am I getting These you may ask?

When you sign up for Global Entry you may end up subscribing to receive updates from the DHS. I got an email this morning from the DHS with the headline:

DHS Announces Proposed Rule Regarding Equal Treatment of Faith-Based Organizations in DHS-Supported Social Service Programs

I was thinking why am I getting this I don't remember subscribing but then remembered it may have come as a result of signing up for Global Entry 7 years ago.

 

 

The message:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today is proposing a rule that would implement President Trump’s Executive Order No. 13831 (May 3, 2018) to remove regulatory burdens on religious organizations and ensure that religious and non-religious organizations are treated equally in DHS-supported programs. The proposed rule would ensure that DHS-supported social service programs are implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution and other applicable federal law.

Specifically, the proposed rule provides instructions on religious liberty protections to the organizations that participate in DHS supported social service programs, including the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Citizenship and Integration Program Grant, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Emergency Food and Shelter Program, FEMA Crisis Counseling, and FEMA Disaster Case Management.

"On behalf of DHS, I would like to thank the president for his leadership in helping to reverse the previous administration’s requirements discriminating against religious organizations by saddling them with unique regulatory burdens," said Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf. "Our proposed rule recognizes that religious organizations are valuable partners in the federal government’s efforts to support the public with needed social services, and that they deserve every chance to compete equally on a level playing field for federal funding and not discriminated against simply because of their religious affiliation."

 

Full details can be seen here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/01/16/dhs-announces-proposed-rule-regarding-equal-treatment-faith-based-organizations-dhs

A big part of leadership is deciding, and good decision-making benefits from intelligence, thoughtful deliberation, and experience, but also, as i hope you agree, from sound values.

Seth Klarman a hedge fund manager from the Boston, Massachusetts area that I have admired for years and author of one of my favorite finance books "Margin of Safety" has a great quote in a recent Harvard Business School speech. The quote is "A big part of leadership is deciding, and good decision-making benefits from intelligence, thoughtful deliberation, and experience, but also, as i hope you agree, from sound values."

Other great lessons in the piece can be found here for my reference: https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=6818

The Lottery Hack

In what I think is one of the best editorial pieces I have read that has ever come out of the Huffington Post by Jason Fagone: The Lottery Winners is a great piece that details how a semi-retired Michigan couple embarks on a journey to take advantage of an opportunity in the Michigan and then the Massachusetts lottery system. The Lottery WinFall games talk about how a loophole in a system can be exploited and those either with enough intelligence or hard work (in this case they spent thousands of hours doing mundane tasks and driving 700+ miles through Canada and back into the USA) can create a short lived business opportunity.

It's a great piece that I'm bookmarking along with the original Boston Globe Spotlight piece:

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/08/03/lottery_game_is_fatally_flawed_treasurer_should_shut_it_down/

Another article of respect from last week: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/this-is-the-man-who-helped-peter-thiel-demolish-gawker-mr-a?utm_term=.uvLLwzDam#.gnYkq4aQ5

H-Day September 3, 1967

H-Day in Sweden also known as Hogertrafik Day. This is the day in which Sweden decided to switch from driving on the left to the right because there was an increase in accidents of Swedish drivers driving outside of the country. The mass car accidents abroad for their residents and visitors crashing was a problem since all neighboring countries drove on the right and not the left. In Europe today only the United Kingdom & Ireland still drove on the left but the rest of Europe. After advertising with a song specifically about the switch, billboards, pamphlets, radio advertisements, and specific rules set in place to make the switch it was set for 9/3/1967 for the switch from one side to the other.

Sweden was he LAST mainland European country to switch driving sides. Belgium and the Netherlands switched in the 1920's, eastern Austria (Yes half of Austria drove on one side of the road and the other half drove on the other. Eastern Austria drove on the  Left and Western drove on the right), Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all drove on the left until Hitler invaded in World War II and changed that. Here in North America, Nova Scotia drove left until the 1920's, and Newfoundland until 1947. The US Virgin Islands still drive on the left and the closest area that drives on the opposite side of the road is....The Bahamas.

To learn more about Hofertrafik Day listen to this podcast: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/

 

Actually, Sweden was only the LAST mainland European country to switch driving sides. Belgium and the Netherlands switched in the 1920's, eastern Austria (long story-only half of Austria drove on the right), Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all drove on the left until Hitler took them over. Here in North America, Nova Scotia drove left until the 1920's, and Newfoundland until 1947. The US Virgin Islands still drive on the left.

Lyft Founders Heartfelt Message Regarding Immigration Policies

The founders of Lyft sent out this email to their members on Sunday January 29, 2017 after the new U.S. Presidents announcement on a temporary ban and restriction on immigration from "suspect" countries. There after Uber founder Travis Kalnick pledged $3 million to defend his foreign employees rights. What other CEO's have sparked your interest and inspired you to do your part in keeping our country great thanks to our ethnic diversity. What losses will our country endure from tourism and the possible loss of the next Elon Musk or Pierre Omidyar from entering the USA and starting up in a different country.

The Lyft email displayed below:

Defending Our Values

Hi Richart, We created Lyft to be a model for the type of community we want our world to be: diverse, inclusive, and safe. This weekend, Trump closed the country's borders to refugees, immigrants, and even documented residents from around the world based on their country of origin. Banning people of a particular faith or creed, race or identity, sexuality or ethnicity, from entering the U.S. is antithetical to both Lyft's and our nation's core values. We stand firmly against these actions, and will not be silent on issues that threaten the values of our community. We know this directly impacts many of our community members, their families, and friends. We stand with you, and are donating $1,000,000 over the next four years to the ACLU to defend our constitution. We ask that you continue to be there for each other - and together, continue proving the power of community.

John & Logan Lyft Co-Founders

 

Clinton vs Trump Debat Number 2- Wait But Why

In case you have not read the satirist but realistic version of last nights debate between Hilary Clinton and Donald J. Trump then you may want to sit down and have a read: http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/second-presidential-debate.html

When you are writing things as a satirist and bringing laughter to a subject like this stuff it can really put a smile on your face as the comments from the posts readers say.

Writers and journalists typically use their powers for evil and to hurt good people. It's very nice to see a positive spin on this.

What are your thoughts on the Wait But Why piece? Send me an email or comment below.

 

-Richart Ruddie