| | | | | December 21, 2018 | | And now, your week in review, in haiku 1. When your House is on fire, you'll remember the ones who rescued you 2. Sometimes: God knocks on your door so hard she cracks a rib. Ruth's lucky break 3. The sound of breaking news drowns out all hope and sense: Doncacophany. 4. On the other side of The Wall, it will still be Christmas. Holy night. 5. The shortest night does lead to longer days: It all gets brighter from here Wishing you all a holiday season filled with love, renewal, and good vibes. RaceAhead is on hiatus until Wednesday, January 2, 2019. | | | | | | | | | | Team Fortune examines the shrinking middle class | | Please bookmark, read, and share this ensemble piece from Fortune, and expect more of this kind of reporting from us in the future. Nearly every person on staff touched some piece of this, and we brought in some extraordinary photographers to round out the perspectives. All respect to Fortune's digital editor (and so much more) Andrew Nusca for taking the concept from drawing board to page. If we want to ask deeper questions about the talent pipeline and economic opportunity, this is an important place to start. The entire series is here ; I recommend you start with this story about working-class single parents in NYC. Photos are by the great Andre Wagner, and it was written by Fortune's Aric Jenkins, a young journalist who should be on your radar screen. | | Fortune | | | Quitting Wall Street to feed the homeless | | Office workers eat plenty of takeout food during their long days at their desks. Some, in upscale professions like finance, order a lot of it. Wasting it seemed like a shame and a missed opportunity. At least that's what Robert Lee thought, a one-time finance wunderkind on the rise. So he created Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a non-profit which takes clean, uneaten food headed for dumpsters and diverts it to shelters and food support non-profits nearby. Last year, they saved nearly 800,000 pounds of food. Lee is the son of Korean immigrants who struggled to get by, but he diverted himself from a very promising career in finance to work on food insecurity full time. "They sacrificed everything in their whole lives to come to the U.S. for us to have the opportunities they didn't have, so for me to squander that at a job where I felt I didn't have an impact … would've been the real waste," Lee said. | | Politico | | | Spend some time with Celeste Ng | | A novelist for a modern age, Ng uses her enormous platform to do more than bestow delight upon her legion of fans with her attention. She gets to work. She takes on trolls and other abusers, to raise up other authors and to support causes she cares about. Recently, she joined a group of writers auctioning naming rights to characters in upcoming works to raise money for a non-profit that reunites separated migrant families. Her novels have sold a combined 2.5 million units, and several of her works are being adapted for screens large and small. "Celeste has written a collection of modern women (and men) whose characters embody so many of the struggles and complexities of this time we are living in," says Kerry Washington, who will be producing and starring in one adaptation for Hulu. | | New York Times | | | A graphic novel telling the stories of enslaved women resisters | | Amba, Lilly, Sarah, and Abigail are not names most people know, but we should: They were part of a group who organized the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, a little-known incident that mostly credited men as leaders. Historian Rebecca Hall, a scholar-activist with both a J.D. and PhD, has spent much of her career uncovering stories of African and African American enslaved women, particularly those who led organized revolts. She's co-created a graphic novel filled with extraordinary scenes of erased history, beautifully illustrated by comic artist Hugo Martinez. A successful Kickstarter campaign got the work picked up by the 37Ink imprint at auction. | | Hyperallergic | | | . | | | | | | | The health of the many depend on the health of the few | | I've been enjoying this ongoing series about public health by Boston University's Dr. Sandro Galea, and not just because he occasionally sounds a bit like Mr. Spock. In this thoughtful piece, he recalls the fundamental message of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, to remind us of the enduring message that's buried in the heart of the classic tale. "Tiny Tim is in many ways a stand-in for the most vulnerable members of Scrooge's society, those who did not share in the economic gains or improved living standards created by the Industrial Revolution," he writes. For Ebenezer to be redeemed, Tim would have to live. But that's not the fate of many of the most vulnerable members of society. Life expectancy in the U.S. has declined, and health outcomes are alarmingly variable by race, economic status, and education level. What will redeem us? | | Fortune | | | I don't know about you, but I'd like to visit Fergus Falls, Minn. | | This is a schadendfreudian tale of a German journalist from Der Spiegel magazine who parachuted into a "real American town" for three weeks to explore the psyche of rural Americans in the aftermath of the Trump presidency. Written as a rebuttal by actual Fergus Falls residents, it tells a cautionary tale about clickbaity, stereotype-driven journalism (that also turns out to be riddled with errors of fact). But it ends up being a snapshot of the lives of the actual residents. It's hard to write a story about regular people living their lives (unless Celeste Ng is on the case) so sometimes you need an enemy to kick you into gear. And this enemy appears to have been the real deal: In several instances supported by photos, Claas Relotius appeared to have just made stuff up. The twist: the things he made up would be totally credible to anyone who was prepared to believe that small towns are only made up of bible-toting rubes who will dress up in Western gear on any day ending in 'y'. | | Medium | | | Science: Play first, play hard, play now | | This is the sage advice from Ed O'Brien, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. His lab conducted a series of surveys exploring people's attitudes toward their preferred timing of leisure activities, particularly if they had other responsibilities looming, like an exam or deadline. People generally opt to finish work first, believing that they won't enjoy themselves if they've got important work yet unfinished. Turns out, most people find leisure activities rewarding no matter when they're scheduled. "Our findings suggest we may be over-worrying and over-working for future rewards that could be just as pleasurable in the present," he says. "This is a problem, because, among other benefits, leisure improves our work," he says. Professor O'Brien is clearly a very smart man. And he's probably outside right now, romping with a golden retriever or something. What are you doing? | | . | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This message has been sent to you because you are currently subscribed to raceAhead
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 | Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. | | | | | | December 21, 2018 | | It's time for reflection as the world heads for a shutdown—the good kind, where you rest, play, read, watch, listen, and otherwise enjoy the company of friends and family. We all have plenty to contemplate. Instinct suggests we're exiting an epoch of excess, a period where easy money trumped good ideas and prudent decision-making. In China, for example, a reckoning is imminent for what always looked like an insanely crowded bike-sharing market. As we mentioned yesterday, Alibaba-backed Ofo is having trouble honoring $200 million in rider deposit requests. Breakingviews suggests Ofo could go bankrupt, a sign of Chinese investment overkill. Elsewhere, chickens have come home to roost for executives who chased fads, sometimes even if they were the right fads to chase. The Wall Street Journal reports that miner Barrick Gold is cutting back on the "digital reinvention" strategy of its executive chairman, ex-Goldman Sachs banker John Thornton. (The company suggests its moves are prudent rationalizing ahead of a major merger rather than capitulation.) Digital transformation is tougher to do than say. Former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt liked to repeat the mantra that the industrial titan needed to be a "top 10 software company," a noble-sounding goal that turned out to be a hollow mantra. GE's head of digital is leaving as GE dumps digital assets. In media, it turns out that companies like Mic, BuzzFeed, Vice, and others could do great things when the venture-capital flowed but not so well when it was time to run a business. *** I'll spend the next two weeks reflecting on how I can do better in 2019. This is my last Data Sheet until January 8, when I'll be in Las Vegas for the consumer-electronics trade show CES, though the newsletter will return to your in-boxes starting Jan. 2. On behalf of Aaron and the entire Fortune editorial team, thank you for sharing your days with us over the past year. May you and yours have a joyous Christmas, a restful time off, and a healthy, prosperous, and happy New Year. | | | | | | | | I know the name of my next band. Federal prosecutors charged two Chinese nationals with conducting an extensive hacking campaign that attacked 45 U.S. companies and others in an effort to steal data and intellectual property. The pair, known as Advanced Persistent Threat 10, stole data on thousands of Navy personnel and also penetrated computers linked to IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and NASA's jet propulsion laboratory. Cooked up in my basement lab. Seeking to enable more commerce over its popular WhatApp service, Facebook is developing its own digital currency. The initial focus is for users in India, Bloomberg reports. The plan is for a so-called stablecoin, a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the value of a standard currency like the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, India is caught up in a debate over data snooping after a government order issued on Thursday permitted 10 agencies to intercept and monitor "any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer." You know you've made it when. Forget the A.I. race and the 5G race and all that. The most important tech race in the world is probably the push to develop quantum computers, machines capable of so many simultaneous operations that they could render present encryption techniques useless. On Wednesday, Congress passed a bill, which the president is expected to sign, laying out a 10-year development plan complete with grants for researchers and a dedicated presidential advisory committee. Free to play. Furthering consolidation in the mobile gaming market, Zynga said it would pay $560 million for 80% of Small Giant Games, makers of the popular title Empires & Puzzles. That's an awful lot of Atlantis coins. Poof. The $1.6 billion lawsuit hanging over Spotify's head disappeared on Thursday in a settlement that appears to be for a small fraction of the initially demanded sum. Wixen Music Publishing, which owns rights from rock greats including Tom Petty and Neil Young, agreed to drop the suit for an undisclosed amount, which signals a small settlement, Variety reported. A large payout by Spotify would have to be disclosed under SEC rules. No one gets fired for buying from Google. If you work in advertising or ad tech, you may be interested in this analysis by Digiday's Seb Joseph about why Verizon's Oath unit has struggled, leading to the huge write down last week. | | . | | | | | | FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE | | Prime and Punishment: Dirty Dealing in the $175 Billion Amazon Marketplace (The Verge)
Last August, Zac Plansky woke to find that the rifle scopes he was selling on Amazon had received 16 five-star reviews overnight. Usually, that would be a good thing, but the reviews were strange. 4 Days, 170,000 People, and One Metallica Concert Later, I Figured Out What Salesforce Is (Quartz)
It was only day two, and already the spectacle that is Dreamforce had left me no choice but to eat some weed. I chewed up half of a strong California gummy, the kind that you buy legally in an Apple store for stoners, and settled into a couch on a terrace overlooking San Francisco. The Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Very Litigious Bikini (The New York Times)
On a sunny summer day in Montauk, Ipek Irgit was in the familiar situation of not knowing what she was doing with her life. It was 2012, and she was 34 years old. Earlier in the year, after having her heart broken, she had taken a vacation in Brazil, visiting Rio de Janeiro and the beach towns of Bahia. Now she was on the beach on Long Island, wearing a handmade-looking bikini with crochet and exposed elastic straps, trying to figure out what to do and who to be. The Bootleg Video Vans of the Soviet Union (The Atlantic)
I learned English—and Western culture—watching American movies in smoky minibuses. An Object Lesson. | | . | | | | | The near-two-day disruption of flights at Gatwick Airport this week highlights again the potential-and real-security threats from autonomous flying aircraft. Kathy Gilsinan has a deep dive for The Atlantic into the difficulties with regulating drones or building sufficient countermeasures and safety systems. Among those quoted are Jaz Banga, the CEO of startup Airspace Systems. As the risk of accident or malfeasance has grown, so has the industry devoted to countering rogue drones. "It's almost the Wild West of counter-drone [development] out there right now," said Banga. Various companies offer different kinds of monitoring systems: net guns that can be used to capture drones and bring them down, vehicles like Airspace's that can tow a potentially dangerous flying object away from a crowd and to safety, and even "geo-fencing" software that physically repels a drone from flying into certain airspace. So far, however, none of these systems are deployed in any comprehensive way around the United States. Instead, a patchwork of systems is being used in a handful of sensitive areas, such as airports and stadiums. "Most cities don't have anything," says Tim Bean, the CEO of Fortem Technologies, another drone-security company, which launched its own detection services in recent months. The technology is currently being tested at Salt Lake City International Airport, and one other that Bean declined to identify. Most of the remaining hundreds of airports around the country aren't using any dedicated drone-detection services, and drones are too small for most standard radar to detect.
| | . | | | | | | | | | | | | | I don't know about you, but I'm more than ready for 2018 to come to an end. If you want to reminisce a little before the year draws to a close, though, Google has the game for you. Which word was searched more this year, Yanny or Laurel? Who was more popular with Google users, Elon Musk or Iron Man? Which fictional bear got the most search love, Winnie the Pooh or Paddington? Not as easy as you thought? Good luck and we'll see you back here in the new year. Data Sheet resumes on January 2, and Adam returns for essay writing on Jan. 8. This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman. Find past issues, and sign up for other Fortune newsletters. | | | | | | | This message has been sent to you because you are currently subscribed to Data Sheet
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