  'Float' Is Breaking New Ground on Disney+ December 5, 2019
While Disney was busy keeping pundits occupied with its new streaming service, they were also making the business and emotional case for inclusion. "Float" was one of the new short films released on Disney+, developed as part of the SparkShorts program, which aims to give a meaningful first platform to underrepresented filmmakers. “Float” tells the touching story of a father who struggles to understand and protect his new son after he learns that he's different than other kids—he can float in the air, a magical-seeming power that alienates others. It was inspired by creator Bobby Rubio’s own experience as the new father of an autistic son, and his own fear that his son would be judged by others is palpable. "Accepting my son for his autism diagnosis, I have to admit it took me years," Rubio tells CBR's Reuben Baron, a journalist with autism. "I know the short lasted only six minutes, but it took me a while before I could accept my son for who he is. I remember in the beginning, much like in the short, I was trying to hide that he has autism. He sometimes would spin and I’d be like 'Hey Alex, can you stop that? Can you stop spinning?' And now I accept that that’s Alex. He spins because that’s what calms him down, but it took me a while before I was able to accept that." Rubio, who has worked at Pixar as a story artist since 2012, has also broken other new ground by creating the first animated film that centers Filipino-American characters. Ironically, his original pitch and storyboards depicted the father and son as white. "A co-worker saw the cover and said, 'Bobby, this is your story. The character should be Filipino American.' I thought, does anyone want to see a Filipino American character? I had this unconscious bias," Rubio tells Variety. While "Float" is exclusively on Disney+, you can get a glimpse of it in this short video from KTVU, which includes a brief interview with Rubio. The SparkShorts program is already delivering on its promise of diversity. "We can give more people a chance to tell their stories," says producer Krissy Cababa. "Not only can we give more people here a voice, but we can also get gritty with our stories." Rubio says he got the encouragement he needed. "I didn't have to sugarcoat the story. I was allowed to tell the story I wanted to tell," says Rubio. Ellen McGirt On Point
After a "candid and productive" conversation with Gabrielle Union, NBC opens an investigation into her dismissal from AGT Further, the network says, "we are working with Gabrielle to come to a positive resolution." Union, along with co-star Julianne Hough, lost her judging job on America's Got Talent when their contracts were not extended past the first season. Among the allegations that were leaked: Union had received notes for her "too black" hairstyles, and had been ignored when she surfaced complaints about racist jokes and the misgendering of guests. Union posted an optimistic tweet: "I was able to, again, express my unfiltered truth. I led with transparency and my desire and hope for real change." Pinterest and The Knot will no longer allow plantation sites to use words like "elegant" or "charming" I hadn't considered how important Pinterest had become for couples and wedding planners, but their alliance with The Knot Worldwide makes all the sense in the world. The two are working on new guidelines that will prevent vendors from using words that glamorize Southern plantation history or locations. "We want to make sure we're serving all our couples and that they don't feel in any way discriminated against," says The Knot's chief marketing officer Dhanusha Sivajee. A Pinterest spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company will restrict plantation wedding content on its website, and plans to de-index Google searches for plantation wedding locales on Pinterest. "Weddings should be a symbol of love and unity. Plantations represent none of those things," says a Pinterest spokesperson. How police violence affects the health of Black babies New research published in Science Advances, by Joscha Legewie from the Department of Sociology at Harvard, studies the impact on the health of infants born to Black pregnant people who live in communities where the police have killed an unarmed Black person. Their analysis of 3.9 million birth records from 2007 to 2016 appears unequivocal: "[P]olice killings of unarmed Blacks substantially decrease the birth weight and gestational age of black infants residing nearby." There was no similar effect on white and Latinx births, which suggests that the stress of perceived injustice and discrimination is to blame. On Background
Who do we mean when we say "we"? Jenée Desmond-Harris, a staff editor for the Opinion section of the New York Times, weighs in with an opinion of her own: When media says "we" they often mean "white people." Her opinion piece came in response to a Times podcast advertised as "The Rise of White Wing Extremism and How We Missed It," which drew immediate and pointed condemnation. A bunch of people did not, in fact, miss it. For her part, Desmond-Harris finds the framing to be a terrible and dangerous habit. "[W]hen we suggest that something is true of everyone—or of a group of people—when it's really a more accurate description of what's true of white people in that group, it alienates readers and destroys trust: If you've forgotten that people of color exist, what else have you missed?" Recruiters: It's all about belonging now This piece from the Wall Street Journal makes plain what raceAhead readers have long understood: The companies who will be profitable going forward won't win the talent race by crowing about foosball and onsite dry cleaning. "It will be whether leaders foster a workplace culture where employees feel a sense of belonging, like their jobs and trust their managers to help them move on to a better one." And, they've got the charts and graphs to back them up. Companies that rank in the top 10% in the company engagement measure posted profit gains of 26% through the last recession, compared with a 14% decline at other companies, according to Gallup. The beauty of non-binary Guatamalan-American artist Glenda Lissette moved frequently as a child and came to see her clothes and accessories as a fresh start. "I found a sense of comfort and identity in the clothes I wore," she says. She extended that idea into her latest photography series, The Home We Carry, an exploration of non-binary identity, accompanied by commentary from the subjects. "As a bisexual woman of color, any time I photograph people, I'm always thinking about the complexities of people's identities and the diversity of our perspectives," she says. The photos are also beautiful. "Ultimately, the goal with the series is to document the homes that we construct on our bodies, but I think the series is also looking at the relationship between body & land." Tamara El-Waylly helps write and produce raceAhead. Quote
Reinventing Employee Experience with HXM
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Thursday, December 5, 2019
raceAhead: ‘Float’ is breaking new ground on Disney+
(Photo: Carlos Costa—AFP via Getty Images)
Data Sheet: Bye, Larry and Brin 👋
  With Larry Page and Sergey Brin Gone, Alphabet’s Problems Are Sundar Pichai’s Problems Now December 5, 2019
Upon learning of the retirement of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two multi-billionaire 40-something-year-olds, my first reaction was a shrug. Brin has focused on eccentric pursuits at Google for years. Page once was the more Gatesian of the duo; he had relinquished the CEO job to Eric Schmidt only to snatch it back again. But then, in 2015, he mostly gave it up a second time, delegating oversight of the money-making part of his empire to Sundar Pichai. In other words, ho-hum. "Larry and Sergey" have grown accustomed to having someone else do the heavy lifting. Stepping back from operational roles of Google's parent company, which they still control, felt like a formality. The more I thought about it, though, the more significant the move felt. The Alphabet structure of the last four years served two functions. It separated bold if costly pursuits like Waymo and Calico and Verily so that the executives who run Google could focus on the ads business. It also gave investors the opportunity to segregate their thinking about Google’s pursuits. Moonshots were one thing; cash-gushing businesses were another. The conventional wisdom was that Alphabet's "other bets" were the co-founders’ preserve. So long as Google grew profitably, they wouldn't be messed with. None of that will change quickly. And yet you can see how Page and Brin stepping back makes all sorts of things possible. Far-out ideas like drone delivery and balloon-borne Internet service are Pichai's problemS now. Should he want to make a change, it'll be that much easier without Page and Brin directly involved. And changes will come. Google's business isn't growing the way it did. So it’s ramping up news growth categories, like its own online travel business. That has slapped the likes of Expedia, whose CEO exited Wednesday. Adam Lashinsky Twitter: @adamlashinsky Email: adam_lashinsky@fortune.com This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman. NEWSWORTHY
No more worlds to conquer. The antitrust probe of Amazon has expanded from focusing solely on the company's e-commerce business to include its cloud computing unit, Bloomberg reports. Amazon Web Services captures about half of the market, with Microsoft a distant second at 16%, according to Gartner. Trailing the pack . Shares of smart exercise equipment maker Peloton bonked on Tuesday and Wednesday, falling almost 11%, seemingly in reaction to the backlash against one of the company's new ads. The month-old ad that went viral lately tells the story of a woman, "Grace in Boston," who is given a Peloton by her male significant other. Down but not out. Elsewhere on Wall Street, shares of work messaging service Slack Technologies benefitted from strong quarterly results. Revenue jumped 60% in the third quarter to $169 million, better than analysts expected. Slack shares, previously down 23% since its June IPO, gained another 4% in pre-market trading on Thursday. Down and out. Luxury automaker BMW dropped its plan to charge customers a recurring annual fee of $80 to access Apple's CarPlay software in their vehicles. "BMW is always looking to satisfy our customers' needs and this policy change is intended to provide BMW owners with a better ownership experience," the company explained. We had to make an oil painting . An investigation by the Federal Communications Commission released on Wednesday found that Verizon, T-Mobile and US Cellular exaggerated the extent of their 4G LTE coverage on maps filed with the commission. The commission won't be fining or otherwise punishing the carriers for the inaccurate filings, however.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
In this season of holiday shopping, more people are thinking about gifting "experiences" over stuff. Airbnb has hopped on the trend, with its "Experiences" segment now offering more than 40,000 activities for customers in addition to its typical lodgings listings. It's not easy for hosts to get their concepts for new experience tours listed, however, as writer Deanna Ting explores in a piece for Eater. Most hosts who apply don't hear back from Airbnb until at least two to three months after they've formally applied. Jo Mae "Jumi" Oraa and Greg Gouras, who take people on moonlit missions to find the best street food in Queens, say it took them at least three months to get their application approved as Airbnb Experiences hosts. Saint Olive's original application to be an Experiences host was rejected, but her persistence paid off; a few months later, she reapplied, and this time, the Airbnb Experiences team in Paris contacted her immediately. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
What Went Wrong at Chime? How Rapid Growth Became Its Own Challenge At One 'Challenger' Bank By Anne Sraders Page and Brin Might Be Leaving Google Management but Their Control (and Wealth) is Locked in By Erik Sherman Amazon Touts Machine Learning, 'Local Zones,' and A.I. Tool as Cloud Competition Heats Up By Jonathan Vanian Huawei's New FCC Lawsuit Against the U.S. Comes Amid Mounting Pressure Abroad—and at Home By Grady McGregor Are 5G-Powered Cloud Robots the Future of Work? For One Chinese Company, They Are By Fortune Editors Fortune's Most Memorable Interviews This Decade By Rachel Schallom Education as a Corporate Strategy Take it from the Fortune 1000: Support your people and you'll strengthen your business. Guild offers the single most scalable solution for preparing the workforce of today for the jobs of tomorrow. See how Guild does education benefits better. BEFORE YOU GO
I enjoy driving but not nearly as much as Blue Label Labs COO Jordan Gurrieri. He's not only zooming his 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata around tight corners at a local track, but he's also recording all the action with various apps. In a blog post this week, Gurrieri offers his picks for the best driving apps , including programs to help you coordinate road trips with friends, avoid speed traps, and, of course, his favorite racing games. Give it a whirl. Aaron Pressman On Twitter: @ampressman Email: aaron.pressman@fortune.com
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