June 23, 2020

empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines

Technology

Yesterday Apple kicked off its WWDC conference — we are quite envious of Tim Cook’s Zoom background. Besides noting a détente with the developers of Basecamp (see our post from June 17 for more details), Apple confirmed its move away from Intel’s chips and will be creating its own Apple Silicon. For consumers, Apple announced that you’ll soon have the ability to unlock your car from your iPhone rather than your keys, you can finally set third party apps as defaults (when you click a link you won’t be forced to use Safari), and AirPods should seamlessly switch between devices. For a recap of all of the announcements, check here.

👀uh oh: Hoping to help us all wash our hands, Apple announced that its new Watch will listen for “squishing soap sounds” when you move your hands, so it can set a 20 second timer. What could possibly go wrong?

Business

When it comes to the operations and priorities of a corporation what comes first: financial performance for shareholders, product innovation for customers or investment in community and culture for employees?

In late 2019, the Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation as one who is committed to all of its stakeholders, apparently recognizing that employees are a powerful internal and external voice.

Employees have also realized their own power through activism. Google employees, for instance, have been quite active: this week they asked their CEO to stop selling its technology to law enforcement. In the past, they have demanded change in regard to environmental policies, working with the US military and sexual harassment issues. Last month, Facebook employees took a virtual walkout to ask for changes to its political advertising, and Amazon’s warehouse workers (with a boost from tech employees) staged a walkout asking for safer conditions. (This may have been one catalyst for Bezos’s pledge to spend $4B on making a cleaner, safer supply chain.)

The companies seeing the most activism are also the companies who often claim to be the most socially responsible (see Google’s now-removed mantra of “don’t be evil”).

What to watch: Employees are growing more outspoken, and as such, we have seen a new effort to unionize from non-traditional, white collar work forces. Informal collectives have popped up on Instagram aimed at shining a light on the internal culture at several fashion companies. Several newsrooms have banded together to form unions to protect employees from pandemic-related cuts. Maybe the future of employee activism is bound up in the past with labor unions and collective bargaining with a social media twist? Since the shift to WFH has destroyed the water cooler conversation, maybe it will spur the need for community and collective culture through unions?

Lifting our eyebrows: We have mixed feelings about Amazon during the lockdown — the lifeline we desperately needed to get our supplies or a slow moving cruise ship headed for an iceberg as our items were delayed, damaged or out of stock. The lockdown exposed Amazon’s strengths as a e-commerce platform but also its weaknesses in logistics and last mile delivery.

Amazon, however, is attempting to woo us back to the platform with an alternative to the yet-to-be-announced Prime Day. This week Amazon is hosting the “Big Style Sale” with daily sales on brand name fashion. I suspect that like me the only “fashion” you have been consuming these past few months are masks and cozy pants, but Amazon is hoping that large discounts will lure us back to our prior behavior of retail therapy.

Amazon hopes to help brands move inventory which has been sitting around since March, as physical retail stores are slow to re-open. Plus, do you really want to try on clothes without a hazmat suit?

On the other hand: Second-hand e-commerce sites like Thredup and theRealReal (think of them like online thrift or consignment stores) have been prospering through the pandemic. People with full closets and nowhere to go have been selling their goods, while those with less money to spend and time on their hands to browse, have been hitting the racks. The online resale market is expected to grow by 27% this year (compared to an expected decline in overall retail).

Resale also has the benefit of a lower environmental impact. Retailers like Zara whose business models survive on fast fashion are looking to pivot in order to increase their sustainability. American Eagle recently opened a new store dedicated to “consciously-made, slow fashion.”

When will we see Amazon open a private store for luxury resale? Or will the counterfeits be too hard to control?

Culture

If you live in a large city, you may have noticed that the lockdown has brought a rash of illegal fireworks displays. In Los Angeles, it’s a nightly activity which started in mid-March, and has caused my dog to have multiple and frequent panic attacks. Brooklyn saw a 4000% increase in fireworks complaints in the first two weeks of June, and Boston is on a similar trajectory.

While I do think the fireworks are just a response to utter boredom of the lockdown (and sales on inventory as July 4th events are cancelled), my favorite explanation is that this is an elaborate psyop: an attempt by the US military to desensitize us to the sound of explosions, in the event that they need to quell protests through an armed invasion.

Go Deeper:

Slate

NY Mag

Sports

Live professional sports are slowly re-opening across the globe, and most are played to empty stadiums. If you prefer soccer (or football) watch the Australian A-league or Germany’s top league. South Korea has restarted baseball, while NASCAR and the PGA have returned in the US.

One unique consequence of the empty stadiums is that cardboard cutouts and Chrysanthemums are having their day (a string quartet recently filled its empty theater with 2,000 plants), and fans have been sending in photos to “sit” in the stands.

In the US, the NBA has opted to give each player a smart-ring to help spot any COVID symptoms, while the MLB is awaiting agreement from players to start the season (even though four teams shut down their training camps over outbreaks). Tennis hit a snag when Novak Djokovic tested positive for COVID following a European tournament.

College athletes have been returning to campus for workouts, but the re-openings did not often go as planned. Clemson, Texas and Kansas State have all revealed outbreaks in their football teams.

What matters: While the return of sports is an important step in the return to normalcy and will give us something else to watch and complain about, large, well-funded organizations haven’t quite figured out how to keep their professionals safe even when they are in an effective bubble.

If we can’t reopen sports safely, can we reopen schools? How will we go back to work without daycare? Sports teams aren’t selling tickets, so they are forfeiting a large profit source to get back on television. Is it worth it?

Go Deeper:

Washington Post with a rundown of US leagues

Podcasts

If you need a break from reality and are partial to conspiracy theories, have a listen to Wind of Change. The title may sound familiar — it’s the name of Scorpion’s song from the 1990s. The podcast investigates whether or not the CIA wrote this power ballad in an effort to end the Cold War through musical propaganda. Hairbands, spies, 1990s…what's not to love?

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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