What I wrote last week
Travel during Covid, from the US to Vietnam with a transit at Haneda Airport in Japan
Business
Some Companies Ditch Annual Raises and Review Worker Pay More Often. I support the review of pay and performance more often than just once a year. The practice will enable workers to make adjustments more timely and get rewarded for their hard work faster. What’s there not to like?
Craft Beer Snobs Suddenly Love the Humble Lager. “Lagers, which range from the bright yellow pilsner to the darker, full-bodied Märzen, are produced at low temperatures. The slow fermentation and refrigeration process reduces the speed of yeast activity during conditioning, creating a crisp flavor and brilliant color. But keeping the beer in tanks for the weeks it takes to make a lager costs more time and money. Lagers are the most popular style of beer on the U.S. market, according to an analysis by Allied Market Research.”
Inside Peloton’s epic run of bungled calls and bad luck. Epic indeed. It’s a major red flag that a Board of Directors had to tell its CEO to take his ambitious claims down a notch.
Netflix struggles with ambitions in India. I don’t know if Netflix’s alleged 5.5 million subscribers in India is correct, but its struggle to fight Amazon Prime and Disney is widely reported. There is a reason why Netflix cut its prices in India by 60%. According to Financial Times, the company’s struggle stems from the failure to localize its strategy and cater to the India consumers. Time will tell if Netflix will become more competitive in such an important market. “According to one industry veteran, Netflix’s approach “was more like, ‘I have built the plumbing for the whole world, I just need to turn on the tap in India,’ instead of having an India strategy”.
Berkshire Hathaway’s 2021 annual letter. “Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.”
Boeing outsourced $9-per-hour engineers in India to write the software for Boeing 737. If pushed too far, the urge to generate as big a bottom line as possible can mean a world of harm to a company, including human lives. What happened to Boeing and its 737’s deadly crashes are a perfect example of that. I am not saying that $9-per-hour engineers aren’t technically good. The use of these low-pay contractors may not be THE reason for the crashes. It surely adds to the disturbing reports on Boeing’s less than ideal due diligence in manufacturing 737s.
Other stuff I find interesting
Inside Pornhub. An interesting look inside one of the most popular porn sites on the Net as well as the content moderation issue.
USPS is deploying gasoline-powered delivery fleet in a snub to the Biden’s administration’s effort to reduce carbon emissions. It’s a mystery to me that Louis DeJoy is still the CEO of USPS
The digestible Ukraine explainer you’ve been waiting for. Treat it as a starter, not a comprehensive read on the subject. Regardless, it’s mind-blowing that we are at risk of having World War III when the pandemic is still wrecking havoc around the world
Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? A pretty interesting piece on the prices of energy from different sources as well as some alleged reasons for the price movements.
Stats
“Global Consumer Spending in Top 100 Subscription Apps Climbed 41% to $18.3 Billion in 2021”
Apple is the top brand in the US, according to a survey of more than 13,500 consumers by prophet
Minh Quang Duong 