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What are we reading? June 27, 2019

Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web. Kirk LaPointe, editor-in-chief: Good news and bad news.
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Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.

Kirk LaPointe, editor-in-chief:

Good news and bad news. The bad news first: as we age, our work efficiency and capacity decline faster than we think. The good news is that there are some things -- some, not many -- that can be done about it. The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-professional-decline/590650/

For the time being at least, attention is swinging back to Elizabeth Warren in the race for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Once thought of as a contender, Warren’s highly progressive views were duly scrutinized and ultimately pronounced too far to the left for America. Now she is regaining traction in the race and much of it has to do with the clarity of her ideas. New York Times Magazine

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/magazine/elizabeth-warren-president.html

It was an extraordinary development five years ago: the disappearance of a plane over the ocean. Now an investigation asserts authorities know much more than they are disclosing about the vanishing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.  The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/

Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:

As Canada keeps taking it in the solar plexus from China in the global diplomatic and trade octagon, the country needs to reconsider its economic infatuation with the Middle Kingdom and ponder some hardball questions, such as: is free trade with China even an option? – Macdonald-Laurier Institute

http://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/20190315_MLI_Canada-China_Free_Trade_%28Chen%29_PAPER_FWeb.pdf

Wise use of water is becoming a critical issue for life on earth.  Here's a report advocating more intelligence in using the precious resource. – Intelligent Water campaign

https://images.arcadis.com/media/C/7/A/%7BC7A67D85-0C93-43A4-8CA5-B9C65EF75A6E%7DRP_IntelligentWater_Campaign_WTR_LW20190520_Single.pdf

Good news for clean-air advocates everywhere: renewables are catching up to King Coal in U.S. electricity generation. – U.S. Energy Information Administration

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39992

Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:

The U.S. Supreme Court rejects the Trump administration’s bid to put a citizenship question on the country’s next census. Unlike its ruling on Trump’s Muslim ban, when the court’s Republican majority averted its eyes from the government’s transparently sinister motives, the court’s census ruling acknowledges the citizenship question’s obvious purpose of politically weaponizing the census. – Talking Points Memo

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dc/supreme-court-census-citizenship-decision

 

This long weekend, consider seizing a Caesar and checking out this piece by the Courier’s Sandra Thomas on Vancouver’s Barb Snelgrove, whose innovative variants on the Clamato concoction have won her recognition in a new book, The Caesar. 50 Years. 50 Stories: Celebrating a Half-Century of Canada’s National Cocktail. – Vancouver Courier

https://www.vancourier.com/living/vancouver-resident-makes-caesar-history-1.23867972

Glen Korstrom, reporter:

When a drug smuggler’s yacht had problems on a trans-Atlantic journey, he tried to stash tens of millions of pounds of cocaine on the Portugese island of São Miguel. The cargo got loose from its hiding place and the packages floated out to sea before washing ashore. This long read describes how it changed life on the island. – Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/10/blow-up-how-half-a-tonne-of-cocaine-transformed-the-life-of-an-island

Marking the anniversary of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s passing is this reflective look at the adventurous journalist’s distinctiveness in how he chronicled societies, cultures and people through food. – Jacobin

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/anthony-bourdain-parts-unknown-obituary

Online retailers are increasingly sophisticated in ways to manipulate visitors to buy products, as this story sets out. – New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/technology/e-commerce-dark-patterns-psychology.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Hayley Woodin, reporter:

Will they or won’t they? The road to the Trump-Xi meeting in Osaka has been long, confusing and littered with political posturing. Ahead of an expected meeting at the G20 summit, this article suggests Chinese propagandists – baffled by Trump – are waffling. – Nikkei Asian Review

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Baffled-by-Trump-Chinese-propagandists-waffle-ahead-of-Osaka 

The Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association released its inaugural State of Downtown report this month. It highlights well Vancouver’s growth, and serves as a good reference for facts and figures about our downtown economy. – DVBIA

https://www.dtvan.ca/2019/06/state-of-downtown/