{"id":35324,"date":"2023-10-20T14:37:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/best-of-the-web-sweet-durian-nights-the-not-so-sharing-economy-and-tackling-that-diversity-issue-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:37:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:37:52","slug":"best-of-the-web-sweet-durian-nights-the-not-so-sharing-economy-and-tackling-that-diversity-issue-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/best-of-the-web-sweet-durian-nights-the-not-so-sharing-economy-and-tackling-that-diversity-issue-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of the Web: Sweet durian nights; the not-so-sharing economy; and tackling that diversity issue – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you thought raw was just something people occasionally did to \u201cdetox\u201d, then you obviously have not met a dedicated fruitarian. Thankfully, you can live the experience vicariously through Alexandra Kleeman\u2019s visit to Woodstock fruit festival.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cThere is no meat at the festival, no animal products, no processed food. There are no grains, no nuts, no cooked or steamed or sauteed anything. There is no salt, no oil, no refined sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, garlic, or onion. Sometimes there are herbs or raw corn,\u201d Kleeman writes in the Guardian<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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To immerse herself in the experience, Kleeman subjects herself to a hardcore fruit diet and participates in the festivities that run for 14-days and includes \u201cSweet Durian Nites\u201d, a dance party that climaxed with the consumption of hundreds and hundreds of ripe durian fruits.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Trust me you aren\u2019t going to view durian the same after reading this, which apparently has some sort of cult-like status amongst those who deny themselves the simple pleasures of salt, and the modern-day devil \u2013 sugar.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe cleaner you get,\u201d one of the fruitarian\u2019s tells Kleeman, \u201cthe more your body craves that sulphur flavour. And you\u2019ll be able to taste more in it \u2013 coffee, ice cream, whiskey, lemon. If there\u2019s something you miss eating, durian starts to taste just like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hunting taskrabbits<\/b><\/p>\n


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We\u2019ve all heard of the \u2013 quite frankly mythical \u2013 sharing economy, pioneered in part by TaskRabbit, which is essentially a peer-to-peer marketplace. As Caleb Garling points out on Medium<\/i><\/a>: \u201cSharing doesn\u2019t involve money.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Garling examines TaskRabbit\u2019s recent pivot and the impact that has had on the people using the service to make up their livelihood. It highlights the tension of how a popular company that sells a promise of empowering others, can essentially isolate its users as it moves to put its growth at the centre of its ambitions.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOvernight, the platform shifted from an open-bidding market\u200a\u2014\u200aa kind of eBay for jobs\u200a\u2014\u200ato something much more like a temp agency,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPreviously, if you needed someone to, say, install a door, you described the job and \u201crabbits\u201d (the not-exactly-flattering name for workers, which the company has now ditched in favor of \u201ctaskers\u201d) would bid on the work. You selected the worker you wanted and they came to do the job. By most accounts it was pretty effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But things changed and now \u201cpotential employers enter a four-hour time window, select from one of four main job categories, and enter a description. They then select from a list of taskers whose hourly rates fit the bill, or let TaskRabbit\u2019s algorithm choose one.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The changes have meant that the (Gen-Y) attraction of TaskRabbit, working how you want, when you want it, is now less of a reality. One user described those left on the platform as \u201cindentured servants\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Silicon Valley, we have a problem<\/b> <\/b><\/p>\n

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Much has been written on the sexism of the tech industry, and much more will be written, until such time as something changes.<\/p>\n

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The New Yorker<\/i>\u2019s piece on The Valley Boys<\/a>, is a particularly strong contribution to the debate, deftly dismissing some of the excuses that are used to frame the problem as one of the past and not the present, as well as offering some solid advice about what exactly we have to do next.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSubverting these biases requires more than training,\u201d writes author James Surowiecki who speaks to Joan Williams, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings, and co-author of What Works for Women at Work<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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Williams tells Surowiecki that companies should be looking for \u201cbias interrupters\u201d. There are \u201csystems that identify bias and intervene to mitigate it\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Williams says that, for example, \u201cUntil the nineteen-seventies classical-music orchestras were almost entirely male. Once blind auditions were introduced, the percentage of women quintupled.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Interestingly, the approach is now a startup itself, called Unitive, which \u201cis designing software to do similar work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe software forces recruiters to decide what characteristics they value most, and rank blind r\u00e9sum\u00e9s according to a series of criteria. It also helps companies design interview questions that are carefully tailored to job requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image credit: Flickr\/<\/i> nicolasbuffler<\/i><\/p>\n

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 Follow <\/i>StartupSmart on <\/i>Facebook<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>Twitter<\/i><\/a>, and <\/i>LinkedIn<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you thought raw was just something people occasionally did to \u201cdetox\u201d, then you obviously have not met a dedicated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}