What I Wrote Last Week
Business
‘I am so scared of them now’: Burned from overspending, some ‘buy now, pay later’ users warn others away. BNPL is a tool and whether it is a net positive or negative depends on how one uses it. It can be useful in some cases, but if you can’t control your spending, it will lead to more debt and anxiety. Because of cases like those mentioned in this article, I am in favor of reporting BNPL usage to the bureaus. And if that happens, it will have cascading effects on the popularity of BNPL providers.
The Jobs Numbers Aren’t Adding Up. Immigration Helps Explain Why. The job market is very confusing. Official numbers imply a robust growth, but in reality, workers are either afraid of losing their jobs or struggle to find a new job. None of the people I talked to were optimistic about landing a new position any time soon. The theme is just to stay safe at the current post and wait out this tough time.
How Disney’s Bob Iger Vanquished Wall Street Agitator Nelson Peltz. All signs point to a possibility that the Disney in 5 years will be totally different from the Disney when Bob Iger left the last time in 2020. If he struggled to find a suitable CEO back then, who is to find he will again this time?
TikTok Economic Impact Report 2024. The first-ever report of its kind from TikTok. It’s interesting to see some figures related to how TikTok helps US small businesses. The company claimed to employ almost 7,000 people in the US, have 170 million active users as of Q1 2024, help 7 million businesses generate almost $15 billion in revenue annually.
Fed Governor Bowman says additional rate hike could be needed if inflation stays high. Recent commentary from Fed Governors indicated that they were not willing to cut rates soon, a totally different posture from what investors expect.
How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I. An interesting article on how tech giants are trying to power their AI solutions. They strive to consume as much data in English as they possibly can, even if it means operating in the gray legal area in some cases. I wonder how much more content they need to improve their AI tools and what if there is not a whole lot more to take yet their tools are not good enough, what then? What about other languages? If you are an investor, would you invest in securing as much content in Spanish or Chinese as possible?
Other Stuff I Find Interesting
Why Is It So Hard to Build an Airport? “Despite their importance, airports are enormously difficult to build, not only in the US but around the world. Airport construction is nearly always vigorously opposed by various interest groups, often successfully. Of the 50 largest airports in the US, the average age is 82 years, and only three have been built in the last 50 years. The US has built more commercial nuclear reactors in the past 25 years (two) than it has major commercial airports (none), even though air travel increased by almost 50% over that period.”
EV companies are hungry for Argentina’s lithium. Little is left for Argentines. The goal of a government is to enrich the life of its citizens. When a country is blessed with natural resources and especially when such resources are in hot demand, it’s infuriating to see that citizens in need do not get any assistance. In fact, they still live without electricity in the 21st century.
Climate change: Logging decline after political change in Brazil, Colombia. It’s great to see the decline in deforestation, but if progress relies on political change, it’s not sustainable.
The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk
A Rising Star of Italian Violin Making Is a 32-Year-Old From South Korea. It’s inspiring and admirable to read about An’s journey. She knew she would want to make violins as a career, moved to Chicago as a teenager and relocated to Italy at the age of 20 to pursue her dream. I left my country for Finland at the age of 19, so I knew her path was anything, but easy. Hats off for her.
Stats
Half of Levi’s sales are from its website and stores, not department stores
TikTok drove $15B in revenue for US small businesses in 2023
One battery electric vehicle requires as much rare Earth minerals as 90 hybrid electric vehicles
Instagram made $32 billion in ads revenue in 2021, more than even YouTube
Minh Quang Duong 
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