Business
Amazon’s Washington Strategy Wins Few New Friends in the Biden Era. One of the skills I admire in Satya Nadella and Tim Cook is that they manage the relationship with Uncle Sam very well. As unhinged and unpredictable as Trump was, he didn’t attack (much) Microsoft and Apple while being critical of Amazon. Even when a Democrat is in the White House, Amazon also has a rocky relationship with the US government. Now that Andy Jassy is in charge instead of the combative Jeff Bezos, will Amazon finally forge a cordial and productive bond with the White House and Congress?
Taiwan invests in next generation of talent with slew of chip schools. “Taiwan is racing to set up specialised “chip schools” that run year-round to train its next generation of semiconductor engineers and cement its dominance of the crucial industry. Taiwan’s government has partnered with leading chip companies to pay for these schools. The first four were established at top universities last year, each with a quota of about 100 master’s and PhD students, and another has been approved, the education ministry said.” Any country that is serious about their future should have a look at this. I am not saying that having such an initiative is universally applicable, but the consideration for such a strategic asset is. The more
An Oral History of Apple’s Infinite Loop. A very cool collection of Apple anecdotes. He has been gone for over a decade, but fans still love anecdotes about Steve Jobs. At least this fan does.
Discontent With Disney Over Bill Adds to Trouble for CEO Bob Chapek. As a Disney fan and shareholder, I don’t think it’s great in the long term for the company to lose creative and engineering talent for tax breaks. The war for talent is only going to get fierce and expensive from now. Those tax breaks from Florida will look small in the grand scheme of things. I also don’t support Chapek’s move to prioritize business and distribution personnel over creative folks. At Disney, creativity is in its DNA and what differentiates the company from competition. As a result, it should be nurtured.
Most Medical Debts to Be Removed From Consumers’ Credit Reports. While I understand that access to capital is very important, I don’t fully support this policy from credit bureaus. Consumers should know how much debt they have before they go out and borrow more. Otherwise, they’ll be leveraged up to their eyeballs and go bankrupt. Having medical debts reflected in credit reports is a deterrent. Removing it may create unwanted consequences. Financial firms may look at prospects without unaccounted medical debts as higher risks, but eventually they’ll use a wealth of data on their hands to come up with something to help them evaluate those risks.
Other stuff I find interesting
Face-to-face interaction enhances learning, innovation. “New Cornell psychology research finds that sitting face-to-face, rather than shoulder-to-shoulder, enhances learning and innovation – even when we’re learning complex physical skills that should be harder from that perspective. Across ages, test subjects performed better when they could observe not only an instructor’s hands but also their eyes, gaze and facial movements. The researchers propose that face-to-face interaction transmits valuable social information about goals and motivations in addition to visual information about the task.”
A futuristic McDonald’s in Australia is on the cutting edge of experiential retail.
Historical Redlining Is Associated with Present-Day Air Pollution Disparities in U.S. Cities. “Communities of color in the United States are systematically exposed to higher levels of air pollution. We explore here how redlining, a discriminatory mortgage appraisal practice from the 1930s by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), relates to present-day intraurban air pollution disparities in 202 U.S. cities. Our findings illustrate how redlining, a nearly 80-year-old racially discriminatory policy, continues to shape systemic environmental exposure disparities in the United States.”
Matthew Klein on the Economic Fallout from the Russia-Ukraine War. A great podcast episode on Russia – Ukraine
Stats
3% of the funds invested in African startups between 2013 and 2021 went to female-led endeavors
Total volume was at its lowest level since 1985, with 11.75 million new cars registered in Europe
Minh Quang Duong 