Amazon is bringing fast delivery to rural America, but 48-hour shipping is no easy feat

Good news!

"Amazon is building delivery hubs across sparsely populated parts of the U.S. to cut shipping times to about two days, a big improvement for rural customers used to waiting up to a week. The push also helps the company rely less on the U.S. Postal Service after tensions over contract terms."

Wall Street Journal What's news

Significant proportion of world's rural population missing from global estimates by as much as 50%

How good are actually our estimates of total world population?

What about the urban population? I bet it is not better than rural population.

They say demography is destiny! Maybe it is a guessing game too or anything but an exact science! 😊

From the abstract:

"Numerous initiatives towards sustainable development rely on global gridded population data. Such data have been calibrated [???] primarily for urban environments, but their accuracy in the rural domain remains largely unexplored. This study systematically validates global gridded population datasets in rural areas, based on reported human resettlement from 307 large dam construction projects in 35 countries. We find large discrepancies between the examined datasets, and, without exception, significant negative biases of −53%, −65%, −67%, −68%, and −84% for WorldPop, GWP, GRUMP, LandScan, and GHS-POP, respectively. This implies that rural population is, even in the most accurate dataset, underestimated by half compared to reported figures. To ensure equitable access to services and resources for rural communities, past and future applications of the datasets must undergo a critical discussion in light of the identified biases. Improvements in the datasets’ accuracies in rural areas can be attained through strengthened population censuses, alternative population counts, and a more balanced calibration of population models."

'Significant proportion' of world's rural population missing from global estimates, says study

Global gridded population datasets systematically underrepresent rural population

Fig. 2: Locations of the 307 rural areas analysed in this study.

French Law Protects Crowing Roosters & Smelly Manure with Palki Sharma

Savoir vivre! 

Self-Driving Cars Are a Natural Fit for graying Rural America

Good news!

"... it's a pressing need. There are more than 1 million car-less households in rural America. Providing affordable transit to them has always been an expensive challenge. Thanks to rapidly aging rural demographics, it's becoming harder. Drivers are scarce, costs are high, and the demand for rides to the doctor, the supermarket and the community center is booming. ...
Rural Americans aren't the most obvious early adopters for robo-taxis. But right now they need transit innovations far more than people in more densely populated communities, and are far more willing to accept them. For autonomous technology companies, that's an opportunity to establish the reliability and usefulness of technologies that have struggled to gain acceptance in cities and suburbs. In Grand Rapids, one of those companies, May Mobility Inc., is partnering with government and the community to make that market real. If they succeed, self-driving technologies will have earned a powerful business case, and millions of rural Americans will have a ride. ..."

Self-Driving Cars Are a Natural Fit for Rural America - Bloomberg An aging population that often lives far from essential services is giving autonomous vehicles a chance to prove they can make a difference.

Credits: Last Week in AI

‘Invisible China: how the urban–rural divide threatens China’s rise’

Very recommendable! The tyranny and legacy of Mao Zedong, the world's most notorious and worst mass murderer, lives on thanks to the Communist Party of China!

"... [members of the rural population] seldom succeed, because most working-age men and many women have migrated to cities for employment, leaving their children to be brought up by their grandparents and educated in the local school. The parents return to the village annually for the Lunar New Year festival but play a minimal role in their children’s upbringing. It’s a sad and all too common story affecting more than 100 million Chinese households.

[the author] who has been studying rural China for four decades ... Invisible China, focuses on an issue that has received little attention, China’s vast, isolated and long-neglected rural population. As the authors see it, the rural challenge has ‘remained invisible for too long, not only to the outside world but also to many Chinese’. ...

China’s urban workforce, the driver of the country’s spectacular growth, comes mainly from rural areas. Basic skills were sufficient to move China quickly from poverty to middle-income status. ...

China’s household registration (hukou) system, which strictly separates the urban and rural populations, prevents rural migrants from settling in cities and getting a high-quality education for their children. The burden for educating China’s workforce falls on the country’s rural schools, which are generally of low quality.
As a result, China is teetering on the brink of the ‘middle-income trap’. Beating the trap is no mean feat. Of the 101 countries that were considered middle income in 1960, half a century later only 13 had become high income. The ‘graduates’ include Ireland, Portugal, Spain, the Asian ‘tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and a few Eastern European countries. Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand and many others failed to make the cut. ...
Mao Zedong established the hukou system in the 1950s and actually worked against the accumulation of human capital. ...
The urban–rural divide persists to this day. Over 60% of China’s population lives in cities, but only 36% has urban hukou. Other urban dwellers—over 300 million strong—work and live in a grey area. ..."

From the bookshelf: ‘Invisible China: how the urban–rural divide threatens China’s rise’ | The Strategist