WATCH THIS SPACE- Could a spike in labor protests further exacerbate supply chain woes? Surging inflation is turbocharging labor strikes and protests across the world, especially in the transportation and logistics sector, Bloomberg reports. From natural-gas field workers in Australia and truck drivers in Peru to railway and port workers in the US, employees across the world are demanding better wages to combat inflation.Train drivers in the UK are planning a strike on July 30, and two other transportation unions in the UK set plans for 24-hour walkouts next week.

Workers in most countries lost income during the pandemic: Workers from low-income countries on average lost 3.9% in 2020 and 1.6% in 2021, according to data from the International Labor Organization (pdf). Lower-middle income countries saw their workers lose 7.4% in 2020 and 2.7% in 2021, while workers from upper-middle income countries lost 7.1% in 2020 and 3.7 % in 2021, and high income countries saw their workers’ paychecks shrink 2.5 % in 2020 and 0.8% in 2021.

Why transport workers in particular? They know they’ll be heard: Planned actions would cause “significant disruption” to the movement of freight, Maersk said in a statement last month. Workers in the transportation sector know how crucial their jobs are to the global economy and are aware that any labor disputes may lead to global shortages, higher prices, and would ultimately trigger recessions. The knowledge of their impact is emboldening them to bargain for better pay, Katy Fox-Hodess, a lecturer in employment relations at Sheffield University Management School, told Bloomberg.

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The forgotten art of outdoor sleeping is making a comeback…in architecture form: As we wrestle with extreme shifts in temperature and an airborne respiratory disease, sleeping outdoors is slowly regaining popularity, Edwin Heathcote writes for the Financial Times. In the west, Berkeley-based Fernau + Hartman and Australian architect Glenn Murcutt are on the small list of architects designing homes with outdoor sleeping areas. This adoption of architecture in the developed world takes inspiration from the many households in the warmer parts of the world where sleeping outdoors at night is the norm, including from places like India and Sudan.

Sleeping outside as a public health service is not a novel idea. Outdoor bedrooms were a prevalent feature in the early 20th century, in part to escape the summer heat (1911 saw one of the hottest summers on record), and partly as a social distancing method in response to pandemics like the Spanish Flu.

Remember that Google engineer who claims the company’s AI gained human consciousness? Well, Google fired him: Blake Lemoine, the Google AI software engineer who made news earlier in June after claiming the company's artificially intelligent chatbot generator, LaMDA became sentient, was fired by the search giant. Google says they have investigated LaMDA’s sentience, and have found that Lemoine’s assertions are “wholly unfounded”. Google had initially put Lemoine on leave last month, but ultimately sacked the engineer for “persistently violating employment and data security policies,” a Google spokesperson told Reuters.