fortune--2020-10-02--This is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg taught Anita Hill about ‘power’

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! President Trump and Melania Trump test positive for COVID-19 after Hope Hicks contracts the virus, this week marked Native Women’s Equal Pay Day, and Anita Hill remembers RBG. Wishing you a peaceful weekend.
– A legendary tribute. The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit closed out yesterday with, fittingly, a reflection on what it means to be “powerful.”
In a panel tribute to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anita Hill captured one of the several ways Ginsburg inspired so many. Ginsburg’s frequent dissents—along with their memorable language and feeling, for some, of being on the right side of history—sent a real message about power and who holds it.
“You don’t have to be in the winning column to be powerful,” Hill said of the dissents’ lessons. “You can actually make change when the decisions go in the other direction.”
That reflection, of course, holds special weight coming from Hill, whose historic testimony about sexual harassment by Justice Clarence Thomas in the 1990s still ended with his confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Hill, who today is a law professor at Brandeis, also shared how Ginsburg, in her own quiet way, supported her as the justice joined the nation’s highest court not long after that Senate testimony. Ginsburg, Hill heard, displayed Hill’s book on her bookshelf at work. “It was the affirmation I needed,” Hill remembered. “Not that I wanted her to pick sides, but I wanted someone to acknowledge that I had a side that was worth hearing.”
Thanks for following along this year. More from the last day of the 2020 Summit below.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this newsletter incorrectly identified Charlie Scharf. He is CEO of Wells Fargo. Sincere apologies for the error.
MORE FROM THE MPW SUMMIT
- Taking the leap. Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson rejects the idea of the "glass cliff," or the phenomenon where companies bring in female leaders only when times are tough. "It’s exhausting that that word is put forward when a woman steps into a CEO job. I chose this," she says. Fortune
- SPAC story. Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are here to stay, says New York Stock Exchange president Stacey Cunningham. Fortune
- Crisis x2. How do you lead through a crisis? "Focus on what you can control," says Ellen Kullman, who led the Fortune 500 business DuPont through the recession and is now CEO of startup Carbon. Fortune
- Out of this world. Curious what the U.S. Space Force actually does (or will do)? Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, who also leads the new division, says we use "space assets," from GPS connections to traffic reports, every day. "Before your first cup of coffee in the morning, you’ve probably used space. But you may not know about it," she says. Fortune
- Change the criteria. Changing your hiring criteria can be the key to reimagining your workforce, IBM executive chair Ginni Rommetty says. The tech company eliminated a four-year college degree requirement for 43% of open positions. "It didn't dumb down our workforce," she says. "What we found is their ability to perform, their curiosity, matched everyone's." Fortune
Don't blame the pipeline. Crystal Ashby, interim CEO of the ELC, dismissed the misconception—recently espoused by Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf—that there's not enough Black talent in corporate America: "We happen to be everywhere," she said. Ashby also shared some steps companies must take in order to develop—and retain—the Black talent they already have. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Euler Hermes promoted Clarisse Kopff to CEO. Fast Company promoted Melissa Rocco to SVP, sales. Newly public Warner Music Group has added Ceci Kurzman, founder and president of Nexus Management Group, to its board, making her its first Black director.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Positive tests. President Trump and Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus. Their results were announced late last night after adviser Hope Hicks tested positive earlier yesterday (she traveled with the President on Air Force One this week). It's still unclear what, if any, symptoms the Trumps are experiencing. New York Times
- Election business. Fortune is out with a comprehensive package of stories diving into what business—from all angles—needs from the 2020 election. One of those stories covers what working parents are seeking from their political leaders, from universal childcare to paid parental leave. Fortune
- Pay day. Yesterday was Native Women's Equal Pay Day, marking the 60 cents-on-the-dollar pay gap between Native women and white men. It's one of the latest equal pay days of the year, denoting a larger wage gap. Ms. Magazine
ON MY RADAR
'We will always love you’: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend share pregnancy loss of couple’s third child Washington Post
'Am I the Asshole?’ reveals America’s sexist underbelly Gen
Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman, one of the most successful female founders, is fighting to save her company Business Insider
PARTING WORDS
"That was a moment for us to step back and think, 'Are we doing enough?'"
-Kate Jhaveri, EVP and CMO of the NBA, on the Milwaukee Bucks players' strike after the shooting of Jacob Blake


fortune--2020-10-02--To retain customers, businesses need to make them feel as safe as possible. Here’s how

Pelosi says Trump ’ s COVID diagnosis has improved the odds for another stimulus package

As stores, restaurants, airlines, and offices are trying to lure clients back, this is what they need to do to earn my business: Make me feel safe—no, make me be as safe as possible. As I’ve begun to explore old haunts, some are doing a fabulous job. Others are not.
So my dollars will flow to the former, and I’ll effectively boycott the latter. Think of it as ethical shopping, with a safety twist: I’ll reward businesses that are seriously implementing recommended COVID-19 precautionary guidelines. And I’ll punish, in my own tiny way, those who don’t take them to heart.
Yes, I know businesses across the country have lost huge amounts of money because of the pandemic. But many did get billions of dollars of federal aid to sustain them.
All many of us got was a $1,200 check. Some who would not normally be eligible for unemployment benefits will be able to get them, and some beneficiaries got extended benefits. Some of those have since run out.
It is not that hard to make many businesses relatively COVID friendly and safe, though it requires making that a priority, investing a bit, and thinking out of the box.
My local Trader Joe’s in Washington, D.C., did a stellar job. While I initially limited my shopping to once a week at the crack of dawn, I quickly came to view the store as a safe zone: Shoppers received a squirt of hand sanitizer at the door and were directed to a row of sanitized carts.
Mandatory masking was (politely) enforced, the number of customers in the store was limited, and customers waiting outside were carefully spaced in line at six-foot intervals. Checkout clerks scanned your items from behind a plexiglass partition and placed them back in your cart.
Customers could put their groceries in their carrier bags on a frequently sanitized table outside. If you lived close by, you could simply use the cart to walk the groceries home. Used carts were gathered in an area for re-sanitizing.
Contrast that with a local CVS Pharmacy. Yes, there was a sign on the door indicating masking was required, and plexiglass partitions had been placed at checkout counters. But there was no active enforcement once inside, and it was sometimes crowded. The pile of baskets was, as always, inside the front door, and used ones were placed on top by shoppers as they left.
Some customers picking up medicines had their masks around the neck, and even some of the employees—including sometimes the pharmacist—had pulled down their masks so both nose and mouth were exposed. I know wearing a mask for hours can feel stifling, but if surgeons can do it in the operating room, so can we. And if COVID lingers in the air in enclosed spaces, as we now know it does, not masking could be a problem.
Last week, when I went to pick up a prescription that was not quite ready, I said I wouldn’t wait in a place where so many people were not following our local masking mandate. I left.
On a recent trip to my hometown, New York City, many restaurants in my neighborhood had erected outdoor seating areas on sidewalks and into the street. (Indoor dining was still prohibited at that time.)
But my (formerly) favorite eatery had merely put out a few tables on the sidewalk, which employees wiped down with the same damp cloth. Yes, the tables were (maybe) six feet apart. But tables don’t get infectious diseases, people do. The chairs where potential COVID victims sit (without masks when they eat) were far closer together.
In contrast, the restaurant next door, whose food I normally consider mediocre, had sanitizer at check-in and had set up a tent hung with flowers in what was formerly a parking lane, under which tables were widely spaced with plexiglass partitions separating them.
The wait staff was scrupulous about social distancing. It limited dining to 90 minutes. The food tasted great. Did the restaurant have a new chef, or was it its lovely setup—which really allowed us to relax and not consider a world gone COVID-mad as we ate—that made us enjoy its food more than we ever had?
A high-end Mexican restaurant we visited in Brooklyn went one step further: Each diner had to give a cell phone number at the door in case contact tracing was required. It had created an online menu, so diners made their selections from their phones.
And don’t get me started on airlines, and their varying policies. The risk of in-flight transmission appears to be low if everyone is masked and doesn’t knowingly fly ill. But that’s a big if. Remember, the novel coronavirus’s cousin, SARS-CoV, a far more dangerous but less contagious virus, created an infamous outbreak on a two-hour flight from Hong Kong to Beijing in 2003.
There have been cases related to in-flight exposures in Europe and Asia. Yet Airlines for America, an industry group, said this month that there have been “no confirmed cases of COVID-19 transmission on U.S. flights [italics mine].” Are the Boeings and Airbuses somehow different in Europe than in the U.S.?
And let’s remember epidemiology: There may only be demonstrated cases of in-flight transmission elsewhere because people abroad are more back to normal life than America is. Very few people in the U.S. are flying these days because America still has tens of thousands of new cases a day and leads the world in deaths.
Some airlines, like Delta and Southwest, are not selling middle seats or are selling only about half of their seats. United and American have been flying full whenever they can. On June 30, United’s chief communications officer Josh Earnest (yes, the former Obama White House spokesman), dismissed the blocking of middle seats as “PR.”
“When you’re on board the aircraft, if you’re sitting in the aisle, and the middle seat is empty, the person across the aisle from you is within six feet of you,” he said. “The person at the window is within six feet of you. The people in the row in front of you are within six feet of you. The people in the row behind you are within six feet of you.”
But three feet is better than cheek by jowl. In fact, the World Health Organization says that three feet is acceptable for social distancing.
Yet that’s not so good if you take off your mask. So why do airlines distribute those little bags of pretzels and nuts anyway? When my daughter flew to grad school in California, I insisted she fly Delta, though other carriers fly the same route.
Instead of trying to create a bit of social distancing, some airlines offer a few concessions. Says American: “Customers on all flights receive sanitizing wipes or gel.” United offers to rebook your flight without a change fee if it’s too full for your comfort the night before. It will notify “customers when we can if their flight is fairly full and give them the option to change it”—though you pay the price difference for a new ticket.
A friend of mine flying London to New York checked a United flight seating chart beforehand and—seeing the middle seat was free—prepared for a long, but relatively safe, flight. Shortly after they took their seat, another passenger sat in the middle seat next to them. If you’re going to start college or visit a sick relative, delaying (and paying a higher price) isn’t really a viable option.
Remember, airlines received tens of billions in taxpayer-funded loans to help them survive the pandemic. And—with their crowded, uncomfortable seats and an explosion of new fees—they do not have a good record in recent years of catering to customers’ needs.
So if the government won’t act to enforce some kind of COVID-era standards for customer satisfaction, we all can use our hard-earned dollars to do so.
Yes, COVID precautions often feel like overkill. There is little chance that I will get COVID-19 from one meal, one flight, or one trip to the pharmacy. But multiply those odds by over 300 million Americans visiting millions of places. Many people—maybe someone you love—will.
Elisabeth Rosenthal is editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News and the author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.


fortune--2020-10-03--The Zoom effect: Why plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures might be more popular because of the pa

The Zoom effect: Why plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures might be more popular because of the pandemic

With Trump hospitalized , the White House ’ s cavalier approach to COVID comes under fire

With millions of Americans working from home and avoiding socializing outside of their immediate family and close friends, much has been written about plummeting sales for industries that thrive on people going out, like makeup, and clothing retailers.
That is not the case for plastic surgery. On the contrary, extra time holing up at home has provided a boom in cosmetic services practices that offer popular—and pricey—skin care treatments like Botox and dermal fillers.
Even before some lockdowns were lifted around the country this summer, interest in plastic surgery was already bubbling over as people were isolating. In June, a survey conducted by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) of more than 1,000 consumers found that 49% of those who haven’t had plastic surgery indicated they are open to cosmetic or reconstructive treatment in the near future. Another ASPS study published the same month found that 64% of U.S. plastic surgeons had seen an increase in their telemedicine consultations since before COVID-19 began.
Based on conversations with dermatologists on both coasts, there isn’t just one motivation for this surge, but rather a convergence of some of the pandemic’s most mundane but ubiquitous traits: plenty of time spent at home, empty calendars, less socializing, face mask mandates, and Zoom.
Dr. Marie Hayag, a dermatologist and founder of Fifth Avenue Aesthetics in New York City’s Upper East Side neighborhood, underscores what she calls “the Zoom effect,” explaining she has heard a lot of complaints from new and returning patients about double chins, wrinkles, and eye bags they noticed while videoconferencing. Among the most popular treatments at her clinic right now: neuromodulars (such as Botox) targeting fine lines and wrinkles, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy for hair loss resulting from stress, facial treatment for “maskne,” and body sculpting and contouring with CoolSculpting and Emsculpt (because most gyms and fitness centers have been closed until recently).
Hayag suggests having the extra time itself might not be the only big scheduling factor; after being stuck at home, people are looking for various ways to fill and pass the time, too.
“More patients are working from home and can receive procedures that require them to ‘hide at home’ for a few days,” says Hayag. “There are no social events to worry about in terms of downtime. And it gives them something to do, and they look forward to it. It gives them a break from Zoom meetings and their kids at home. There are limited places they can go to and feel comfortable going. I’ve had patients come to me first before getting their mammograms.”
In the Before Times, one of the primary barriers to scheduling cosmetic surgery was that inability to have downtime, a necessity for both invasive and noninvasive procedures that often result in very visible bruising and discoloration while healing.
“Now that most people are working from home, that barrier has been lifted, and so more aggressive lasering isn’t as daunting as it once was,” says Dr. Dhaval G. Bhanusali, a dermatologist and laser surgeon at Hudson Dermatology and Laser Surgery, his private practice in Manhattan. “I think the countless Zoom meetings have forced us all to critically analyze ourselves, way more than we probably should.”
Bhanusali notes his practice has also turned down certain patient requests more frequently. “As physicians, it is our duty to also serve our patients responsibly, and if they are being overly critical of themselves or unrealistic, we need to do the right thing and gently let them know,” he explains. “Given the current environment, that does happen quite a bit, so we have to sometimes step in and intervene.”
Business at GoodSkin Clinics, founded by Lisa Goodman, was thriving before the pandemic started and still is. And they too have had to turn down patient requests. The company’s new Los Angeles clinic with five treatment rooms opened in March, but then closed as soon as California stay-at-home orders took hold, as did its New York office. After reopening in late spring, Goodman says the clinics received an influx of requests from clients inquiring about treatments they wanted performed at home, but she says they were adamant in not entertaining these to protect the health and safety of her team.
Dr. Lisa Cassileth, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon as well as founder and CEO of Cassileth Plastic Surgery in Beverly Hills, admits she expected business to drop as the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis continued. Pre-pandemic, Cassileth says business was good as patients had more disposable income, and were excited to do popular procedures like liposuction, breast implants, and tummy tucks.
After shutdown measures went into place in March, her facility was able to stay open only for breast cancer patients, with a skeleton crew on-site for patient care while everyone else worked from home. Doctors specializing in facial aesthetic surgery did not work at all. Although most patients wanted to cancel their procedures, Cassileth says a small percentage instead moved their procedures up or frantically tried to put them on the schedule right before the shutdown. “The few that were able to undergo their procedures are very proud of themselves today, as it turned out it was a great time to recover as the world was so separated and distracted,” she says.
“As people became more in touch with themselves at home, business increased and the patient type shifted,” Cassileth explains. Instead of quick fixes and impulse procedures, patients are asking for procedures they have thought about and wanted for years. Breast reductions for 40-plus-year-olds, abdominoplasty on mothers with teenagers, and breast implant removals are common consultation topics.
But not everyone has extra time these days. Since the school year started, Cassileth says there has been another round of cancellations and rebookings as many moms have increased responsibilities with kids doing remote learning. So they’re putting off their appointments until early next year when they expect (or hope) to be less busy. “The interest is up, but the free time is down.”
In the eye of the beholder
Perhaps not surprisingly, many patients have homed in on the area around their eyes as we’re all out and about wearing face masks. Goodman says under-eye fillers, quoted at $1,700 per treatment, are a top draw right now.
“I think that speaks to the fact that people are doing these treatments to feel more confident in their own skin versus impressing others, which is really great to see in my opinion,” Goodman says.
But if the most visible part of the face is now around the eyes and forehead because of face masks, it’s also thanks to face masks that cosmetic surgery patients are increasingly eager to get work done around their nose or lips—precisely because they’ll remain hidden while bruised and discolored during recovery.
“Masks can cover any temporary bruises and marks on the lower part of the face,” Hayag says. “Patients that delayed their maintenance treatments for months were desperate to begin anew their beauty regimen after seeing what a difference it made to their appearance.”
As the pandemic continues, Hayag posits that the upward trend for cosmetic procedures will continue for a multitude of reasons, including that the practices of social distancing and wearing face masks will likely continue even after a vaccine for COVID-19 has been approved. Patients have also become more comfortable with telemedicine and consults via videoconferencing software, and many people will probably continue to work from home, at least more frequently if not daily.
Cassileth is also expecting a greater focus on telemedicine, and says now the first meeting with a new patient is often done through a video call. “Interestingly, the closure rate on these visits is higher,” she adds. “Patients have told us that the doctor seems to be fully paying attention, and there is a better connection.”
Bhanusali thinks we are going to see more and more cosmetic procedures, but the trend will be toward a more natural look and aesthetic. “I also think this will fall more into wellness than anything else. Similar to that first haircut after quarantine, there is something therapeutic about taking care of yourself in a manner that makes you happy,” Bhanusali says. “In the pre-COVID world, we were always on the go and running from meeting to meeting, event to event. With this life pause, we’ve all thought more and more about what makes us happy. My hope is that we are all kinder to each other and most importantly, ourselves.”


fortune--2020-10-03--Netflix enlisted ‘Game of Thrones’ team to adapt China’s best-selling sci-fi novel. Then came contro

Netflix enlisted ‘Game of Thrones’ team to adapt China’s best-selling sci-fi novel. Then came controversy

Netflix’s new blockbuster show The Three-Body Problem has become a problem for the streaming giant.
On Sept. 1, Netflix announced that it was adapting the popular Chinese sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem into a series with Game of Thrones show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss at the helm. The project will mark Benioff and Weiss’s first TV show after Game of Thrones and the first project to come out of the pair’s reported $200 million deal with Netflix.
But the series has come under fire for comments book author Liu Cixin made to the New Yorker in 2019 that seemed to defend the Chinese government’s actions in the western province of Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of constructing nearly 400 internment camps to detain and suppress the region’s Uyghur Muslim minority. Beijing describes the camps as “vocational training centers.” The U.S. government has called China’s treatment of Uyghurs a crime against humanity and is considering whether China’s actions should be labelled as genocide.
“Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks?” Liu said of China’s treatment of Uyghurs in the New Yorker interview, an apparent reference to China’s claims that the camps are a necessary measure to counter terrorism among violent extremists in Xinjiang. “If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty,” Liu said.
Liu’s apparent support of China’s actions in Xinjiang prompted a group of Republican senators in the U.S. to call for Netflix to consider dropping the project altogether.
“We have significant concerns with Netflix’s decision to do business with an individual who is parroting dangerous [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda,” the group of five Senators wrote in a letter to Netflix last week. “We ask Netflix to seriously reconsider the implications of providing a platform to Mr. Liu in producing this project.”
In response, Netflix said it did not agree with Liu’s comments but indicated that it has no plans to cancel or postpone the show’s production.
“Mr. Liu is the author of the book—The Three Body Problem—not the creator of this show,” Netflix said, in a statement sent to Fortune. “We do not agree with his comments, which are entirely unrelated to his book or this Netflix show.”
Netflix rival Disney also recently came under fire for its controversial decision to cooperate with authorities in Xinjiang to produce its new Mulan remake, which a Disney executive said “generated a lot of issues” for the entertainment company.
Stanley Rosen, a professor of Chinese politics, society, and cinema at the University of Southern California, says unlike Disney, Netflix does not cater to Chinese audiences since the platform is blocked in China.
“I don’t think [the senators’ letter] is a big problem for Netflix,” says Rosen. Liu’s source material is unrelated to his comments on Xinjiang and Netflix is free to frame the TV show for Western viewers, he said. Disney, meanwhile, had to grapple with pleasing Chinese and American audiences.
Still, The Three-Body Problem appears caught in the geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. What’s more, the controversy is also only the latest in a series of problems the novel has encountered in getting to the big—or little—screen.
The Problem‘s plot
The Three-Body Problem‘s storyline opens in Beijing in the 1960s with Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics student caught in the turmoil of China’s Cultural Revolution. Ye, accused of sedition, is sent to work for an obscure government agency called the Red Coast Base and discovers a new method for transmitting interstellar messages.
Writer Liu Cixin speaks during 2019 China Science Fiction Convention at Beijing Garden Expo Park on November 3, 2019 in Beijing, China. VCG/VCG/Getty Images
Years later, Ye receives a response from the distant planet of Trisolaris, which introduces her to the more technologically-advanced Trisolarian society but warns that a reply could prompt Earth’s destruction, since it would likely be seen by more belligerent elements of Trisolarian society.
Ye ignores the advice and responds to the message, and Trisolaris threatens to wipe out the human race over fears that Earth will develop technologies more advanced than its own.
The Trisolarian threat divides human society into factions, but the book ultimately ends with humanity banding together to prepare for war against the distant planet.
In the 2019 profile of Liu, New Yorker writer Jiayang Fan notes that the book’s themes mirror the relationship between the U.S. and China. China, the scrappy underdog, must rise up against an established and technologically superior foe bent on suppressing the weaker power, she writes.
Liu has denied that geopolitics undergird his work, but Fan writes that when the book was published “the models for Trisolaris and Earth were immediately apparent.”
Liu’s comments on Xinjiang also make sense in the context of his writings and China’s political climate, Rosen said.
“It’s very clear why Liu thinks democracy leads to chaos,” Rosen said. Rosen says that in contrast to democratic themes, Liu’s books are often critical of concepts like public opinion and human decision making.
Fortune was unable to reach Liu for comment.
Liu’s comments about Xinjiang are not all that surprising, Rosen says, since such views are likely held by the majority of Chinese citizens.
“His comments [about Xinjiang], in a Chinese context, are not exceptional, even though they are anathema to a Western audience,” says Rosen. China does not conduct public polling on controversial topics like Xinjiang as might happen in the U.S., but anecdotal evidence and Chinese Internet culture suggest that the Chinese public would largely agree with Liu’s outlook.
A hit in China and abroad
Liu first published The Three-Body Problem in 2007; it would become the first book in a trilogy called Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The Three-Body Problem is Liu’s best-selling and most famous novel, but Netflix purchased the rights to The Dark Forest and Death’s End, the second and third books in Liu’s series, too.
In 2007, Liu was already a prolific and acclaimed writer, but The Three-Body Problem launched him to international fame after it was translated into English in 2014. That year, he became the first Asian writer to win the prestigious Hugo award in Finland for best science fiction novel.
Liu has sold at least 8 million copies of The Three-Body Problem, with roughly 1.5 million of those copies sold outside of China.
In China, Liu’s series has been a massive hit, still reaching the top ranks of Chinese bestseller lists more than a decade after publication. In August 2020, the Three-Body Problem held the No. 4 spot on China’s fiction bestseller list, according to Openbook, a research firm in Beijing.
“This story felt singular, special, and eminently relatable,” Netflix vice president Peter Friedlander said in a statement about why the company chose The Three-Body Problem for the blockbuster project. “Chinese author Liu Cixin’s ability to interweave science with fiction made his vision of the future and extra-terrestrial contact feel more realistic than any other science fiction I’ve read.”
Benioff and Weiss decided to pick up the project because Liu’s trilogy is the “most ambitious science-fiction series” they had ever read, the pair said in a statement. His books, “take readers on a journey from the 1960s until the end of time, from life on our pale blue dot to the distant fringes of the universe.”
Rosen says Liu’s success is “very rare for Chinese science fiction, but his work is worthy of all the acclaim” given the imagination and scope of his writing. In the U.S., the book garnered such a following that it caught the attention of former President Barack Obama, who called it “wildly imaginative” in an interview with the New York Times.
Production issues
Despite the The Three-Body Problem‘s enormous commercial success, it’s repeatedly failed to go from page to screen.
Yoozoo Pictures, a Shanghai-based film studio, has long held filming rights to The Three-Body Problem and first announced in 2014 that it planned to adapt Liu’s work into a six-part motion picture series. The first film was set to premier in 2016, but has been continually pushed back due to what the filmmakers described as delays in post-production.
In 2019, Yoozoo was also reportedly in talks to adapt the books into a 24-episode animated television show in China. In June 2020, the Chinese studio October Pictures announced that it would work with Yoozoo on yet another Three-Body Problem project, saying that top Chinese filmmaker Tian Xiaopeng would be at the helm of a new, live-action movie series. Yoozoo and its Chinese partners have provided few details about any of the projects, and Yoozoo has not responded to Fortune’s questions on where they stand.
Liu himself acknowledged that bringing his trilogy to life wasn’t easy.
“Given the past experiences of the Chinese film industry, [adapting] The Three-Body Problem would certainly be challenging,” he said in a conversation with U.S. filmmaker James Cameron in February 2019, referring to China’s relative lack of experience in producing blockbuster sci-fi films compared to the U.S.
Director Guo Fan (L) and American actor Michael Stephen Kai Sui in February 2019 attend a promotional event for “The Wandering Earth,” which was adapted from a Liu novella. The film became China’s first large-scale sci-fi blockbuster and its second highest-grossing movie ever. Kelly Wang—AFP via Getty Images
Yoozoo did manage to turn Liu’s standalone novella Wandering Earth into a hit, grossing nearly $700 million in box office sales. But even with the domestic success of Wandering Earth, Yoozoo appeared determined to sell the rights to The Three-Body Problem so it could be produced outside of China.
In March 2019, Amazon was reportedly in talks with Yoozoo to purchase filming rights for The Three-Body Problem for $1 billion, though Yoozoo later denied the claims.
Yoozoo then sold the rights to Netflix for an undisclosed sum last month, but now, with U.S. lawmakers pressuring Netflix to reconsider its Three-Body Problem project, the fate of Liu’s work is once again in question.
The Problem‘s potential
Even with the controversy, Netflix likely is highly motivated to get the project across the finish line, says Chris Fenton, author of Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business
The rights to Liu’s books are “an important piece of business” for Netflix, Fenton says. Liu’s series is being “adapted by world class filmmakers” and has “huge franchise potential,” he says.
For now, Liu, at least, is likely hoping that politics don’t get in the way.
As he told the New Yorker in 2019, “The whole point [of science fiction] is to escape the real world!”


fortune--2020-10-03--With Trump hospitalized, the White House’s cavalier approach to COVID comes under fire

Masks were rarely spotted in the West Wing. Crowds of people gathered shoulder to shoulder on the White House South Lawn. And Air Force One streaked across the sky from one massive campaign rally to another.
With ready access to testing and the best public health minds at his disposal, President Donald Trump should have been the American safest from COVID-19. Instead, he flouted his own government’s guidelines and helped create a false sense of invulnerability in the White House, an approach that has now failed him as it did a nation where more than 200,000 people have died.
Marine One, the presidential helicopter, lifted off Friday to take Trump to a military hospital from the same White House lawn that less than a week earlier had been the site of his celebratory nomination of a new Supreme Court justice as he charged toward the November election.
Several people at the event, including a U.S. senator, have since tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump is now ensconsed at Walter Reed Medical Center after running a fever and feeling fatigued following his early-morning revelation that he had tested positive for the virus.
“He let the country down by disregarding the CDC, ignoring federal guidelines and acting like he was Superman,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “He did not just downplay the virus, he paraded around like a peacock, making fun of those who took it seriously.”
Clashing with the experts
From the pandemic’s early days, Trump, by his own admission, played down the severity of the virus. He repeatedly suggested it would “disappear” and for a while was pushing for the American economy to fully reopen by Easter, just a month after the pandemic fully engulfed the nation.
And he soon began resisting the advice of public health experts on his own coronavirus task force, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. He publicly clashed with the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over everything from the risks associated with opening schools to the timetable for a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
Those on the White House staff dared not break with the president, who wanted to embody a nation on the way back, not one fixated with health guidelines that would remind a nervous public about the virus rather than an economic resurgence.
Experts urged the widespread use of masks, including CDC Director Robert Redfield, who testified before Congress last month that face coverings could be a more effective safeguard than a vaccine. Trump has eschewed their use, telling aides that he didn’t like how he looked in them and that it sent a message to the public that he was worried about his health.
He has worn masks only sporadically and politicized their use, saying he didn’t need them because he was tested and most people he saw were kept six feet away. He mocked Democrat Joe Biden for consistently wearing a face covering, while many of the president’s supporters followed his example and skipped them, even at crowded events.
And their use, while technically required, wasn’t enforced in the White House either. Most senior aides rarely wore masks, even in tight quarters in the West Wing or on Air Force One. A belief took hold that because those who came in contact with president received a rapid COVID-19 test every day, they were safe in their bubble.
But the rapid tests were far from foolproof and were sometimes foiled by the virus’ lengthy incubation period. Staff members, including the national security adviser and the president’s personal valet, contracted the virus while one of the president’s closest aides, Hope Hicks, tested positive just hours before Trump and first lady Melania Trump did.
“He mocked the medical experts and their advice. He mocked it all right up until the presidential debate when he stood on that stage,” said Michael Steele, former head of the Republican Party. “He had the best information possible and didn’t take it.”
Downplaying the virus
The White House, for its part, has brushed off criticism of spotty mask-wearing by Trump and his staff by citing the frequent testing regimen. Trump styles his large campaign gatherings as “peaceful protests” exempt from limits on crowd size. And as for Trump’s undercutting of public health officials, officials are quick to point to contrary medical opinions.
Journalist Bob Woodward recorded Trump early in the year admitting to downplaying the threat of the virus. The president always pushed forward, insisting the nation was nearly over the pandemic even as cases surged throughout the country.
Even in the hours after the president’s diagnosis, senior White House staff, including chief of staff Mark Meadows and economic adviser Larry Kudlow, walked around the White House complex without wearing masks. The White House, even now, says the face coverings are a matter of “personal choice” for most staffers.
In a belated shift, National Security Council staffers were required to start wearing them as of Friday. Secret Service agents are mandated to wear them when social distancing is not possible.
And it wasn’t just about masks.
As the summer wound down, and Trump lagged behind Biden in polls for an election seen as a referendum on White House handling of the pandemic, the president’s campaign aimed to project normalcy in an effort to convince voters that the president had the virus under control.
After a botched attempt to restart Trump’s trademark rallies in Tulsa in June, the campaign began slowly organizing smaller gatherings of supporters, usually outdoors at airports. Though the CDC recommended against large crowds and unnecessary travel, the president began crisscrossing the country, even while Biden largely remained at home, conducting virtual evets.
The rallies got bigger and bigger as the months marched on, with little social distancing and masks recommended but not required. And crowds became part of the messaging for two of the president’s recent signature events: Hundreds of people packed the White House South Lawn for his acceptance speech during the Republican National Convention, and the Rose Garden was packed for the nomination of his Supreme Court pick, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a week ago.
Six days later, Trump was again on that lawn. This time, he walked slowly to the waiting helicopter, bound for Walter Reed for a multi-day hospital stay. There were no cheering crowds. And everyone on the lawn, reporter and staffer alike, wore a mask. Trump did, too.


fortune--2020-10-03--Remember Trump’s trade deal with China? So far they are buying half what was promised

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President Trump likes to brag that his big trade agreement with China is a great deal for America’s farmers and manufacturers. It’s a centerpiece of his “Americans first” agenda, he claims, that will swell our exports of everything from soybeans to LNG. Trump touted the signing of the “Phase 1” accord in January as marking a “sea change” that will enable “Chinese consumers to enjoy the greatest products on earth: those made, grown and raised right here in the USA.”
But so far, the pact is delivering only about half the benefits the president promised. “The size of the export increases in the deal never made sense to begin with,” says Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. “It was really a campaign promise that was totally unrealistic from the start.”
Bown’s comparison of the amounts China agreed to spend on U.S. exports versus its actual purchases for the first eight months of 2020 supports that assertion. Under Phase 1, China pledged to buy a total of $200 billion more on U.S. goods in 2020 and 2021 than in 2017. For this year, the overall target is $142.7 billion, representing a $63.9 billion, or 80% increase over the “baseline” number just four years ago. The agreement encompasses three broad categories: agriculture, manufacturing, and energy. It stipulates the specific products in each sector “covered” by the pact, and sets individual goals for all three industries.
The goals are based on annual, not monthly, purchases. Still, the numbers posted from January to August show that China is slow-walking when it pledged to speed-up, and would need a super-sprint come anywhere near the $140 billion-plus mark. Bown pro-rated the targets for the first eight months of 2020, and compared those benchmarks to actual exports.
For agricultural goods, the annualized goal so far this year is $22.3 billion. China’s running what looks like a big shortfall, having purchased just $9.6 billion in our farm products through August. In manufactured goods, China’s done better: It’s bought $33.2 billion from our factories, fulfilling 60% of the year-to-date quota is $55.4 billion. As for energy, China’s imported $3.5 billion in U.S. natural gas and oil, reaching around one-quarter of the eight-month bogey of $17.4 billion.
All told, China pro-rated target for the first eight months is $95 billion (representing 2/3 of the calendar year’s $142.7 billion). But so far this year, the world’s second largest economy imported almost precisely half that number, $47.6 billion, is U.S. products. Put simply, China’s made good on just one-third of its pledge for 2020. The agreement didn’t cover 39% of the products American businesses shipped to China in 2017, an area that includes technology gear from PCs to semiconductors. In that “uncovered” category, our exports totaled $19.1 billion through July, 30% below the same period in 2017.
For Bown, the stretch goals set in Phase 1 are still a plus even though China is failing to reach them. He believes that purchases could pick up in the fall, since U.S. soybeans are a huge seller in China, and the harvest is yet to come. “That’s been a $13 billion to $14 billion-a-year product that could ramp up,” he says. Still, he says that the targets were unachievable from the get-go, because they so far exceeded previous shipments in the three sectors, and China’s wasn’t growing nearly fast enough to consume quantities that much bigger than in 2017. “The U.S. was also facing capacity constraints that made it impossible to produce all the goods China was committing to buy,” he says. He notes that energy producers complained that they couldn’t extract enough oil and LNG to satisfy the orders China was promising.
The deal’s still a good thing, he says, because it’s preventing the deteriorating trade relations between China and the U.S. from getting even worse. “We’re now putting restrictions on exporting our own semi-conductors and chip-making equipment to China,” says Bown, “and those are product our companies want to sell to China, and that China needs.” While the Trump administration is calling a halt on trade in those and other products, Phase 1 is keeping exports flowing in triumvirate of agriculture, manufacturing and energy. It’s a disturbing barometer of how far free-trade has fallen that a deal delivering half of what’s promised can be deemed a success.


fortune--2020-10-03--With Trump at Walter Reed, the Biden campaign walks a delicate line

Remember Trump ’ s trade deal with China ?
So far they are buying half what was promised

Joe Biden’s campaign announced that they would pull all negative ads on Friday following President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. The move highlights the delicate line Biden’s team will now have to toe with just one month until the presidential election: paying respect to a President ill with a potentially-fatal illness and running an end-game campaign.
Biden told reporters Friday that he had tested negative for the virus twice and would continue campaigning as he had. He offered his prayers to the Trump family and urged all Americans to wear masks. At a socially-distanced outdoor event in Michigan, Biden told supporters that “this is not a matter of politics. It’s a bracing reminder to all of us that we have to take this virus seriously. It’s not going away automatically. We have to do our part to be responsible.”
Still, Biden did cancel the second part of his planned campaign stop in the the Great Lakes state, “based on the crowd size and an indoor—it was concluded by the docs that best not to do it,” he told reporters.
The President, meanwhile, said he would suspend all campaign events indefinitely. The President left the White House Friday afternoon, walking to the Marine One helicopter and briefly waving to the press, to check-in to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for monitoring and to receive an experimental antibody treatment. A presidential candidate has never been hospitalized indefinitely at the end of a campaign, and both Trump and Biden are grappling with an unprecedented situation.
Biden’s team said the decision to go positive was made before the President announced he would stay at Walter Reed, and the Trump campaign said that they will not play by the same rules and will continue to run negative ads.
The regrouping also comes as the Biden team has moved their campaign from what was largely a front-porch, digital effort to a traveling operation. Biden, his wife Jill, and Kamala Harris have begun traveling to key battleground states, hosting socially-distanced, masked events with limited attendance. The President, by contrast, bragged about holding large, crowded rallies with supporters foregoing masks ahead of his diagnosis. Biden’s campaign said Friday that they wouldn’t change their strategy and that the events they were hosting were well planned and safe.
Jill Biden campaigned in New Hampshire on Friday and will travel to Minnesota on Saturday. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, will act as a surrogate for Biden at an event in New Hampshire Saturday.
Trump in the past had mocked the Biden campaign for its adherence to safe practices, and Biden himself for the consistency in which he wore his mask. Biden did not mention any of those barbs on Friday.


fortune--2020-10-03--These noise-cancelling headphones may be indispensable for families stuck at home together

Many adults are working from home during the COVID pandemic while their children attend school online. The result: living rooms are ground zero for a cacophony of math lessons, board meetings, and doctor appointments.
To concentrate, those stuck at home may need noise-cancelling headphones. They help eliminate background noise that may interfere with conversations.
The key is to find noise-cancelling headphones that actually cancel noise and that fit snuggly around the head so they still feel comfortable —even after hours of wear. Of course, cost is also a major consideration, with prices ranging from $50 to $400.
Here are some noise-cancelling headphones to consider:
For adults
The cheapest, most comfortable noise-cancelling headphones
The harsh reality is that if you want comfortable headphones that can filter unwanted noise, you better be prepared to spend a couple hundred dollars. That said, there are some cheap headphones that can reduce noise from the outside world, but they’ll likely be lacking when it comes to sound and durability.
The TaoTronics Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling Bluetooth Headphones are recommended by CNET as a good value—they cost only $50—and are “comfortable to wear.” The main drawback is sound quality, CNET noted. But if you’re only using the headphones to talk to colleagues, sound quality may not be so important. However, if you use headphones to listen to high-quality audio of the London Philharmonic, you may want to try something else.
Good bang for the buck
While I may be biased because I own these, the PSB M4U-1 over-ear headphones are very comfortable. I can listen to music or my interviews for extended periods without feeling like I have a helmet strapped to my head. They also feature fantastic sound quality for the price, producing a clear bass sound that doesn’t seem artificially boosted.
These headphones are $179, while a noise-cancelling version, PSB M4U-2, is $249. Although I don’t have experience with the noise-cancelling version, one reviewer noted that it’s “pretty effective” at filtering out background noise, adding that the earpads offer “a good amount of isolation” that produces “a convincing feeling of being shut off from the world.” That said, the same reviewer said that Bose’s entry-level noise-cancelling headphones outperforms the PSB’s noise-cancelling feature.
For those who want easy access to a digital assistant
Bose’s QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones II have earned accolades from multiple reviewers for their quality noise-cancelling features. One of the selling points of Bose’s entry-level model, which cost $299, is that they contain a button that activates Google Assistant voice recognition technology, so that people can switch songs or lower the volume merely by speaking.
For the audiophile
If you have cash to spare, the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 noise-cancelling headphones have earned praise from reviewers for their superb sound and comfort. The headphones, which cost $400, come with an adaptive noise cancelling feature that adjusts to a person’s environment. So if you’re doing work in the study and then head to the kitchen where your kids are watching TV, the headphones should, in theory, recognize the increased noise and filter it out so you can continue listening to music.
For kids
Wacky colors for wacky kids
The JBL JR300BT children’s wireless headphones, which cost $40, come in colors only kids (or adults with youthful hearts) could love, like bright blue, orange and hot pink. The main selling point is that the headphones have “safe sound” technology, which automatically prevents audio from going over 85 decibels, which may be harmful for still-developing ears. If you want to save money, a more traditional version of these headphones that require a wire that connects to a headphone jack only costs $19.95.
For children with instincts to destroy
The ONANOFF BuddyPhones Wave has the honor of being PCMag’s top choice for the “Best for kids who easily break things” category. That means parents should feel comfortable spending $70 on the headphones knowing that if their child decides to toss them into the air and miss the catch, they should survive. The headphones are also waterproof.
For the sophisticated child
If you want to pamper your kid, the Puro Sound Labs BT2200, which costs $90, has a sleek design that’s more staid than most children’s apparel and gadgets. These headphones also keep audio below 85 decibels and come with a noise-isolation feature so your child can listen to music and study without being distracted. And your child will look relatively stylish.


fortune--2020-10-03--Trump’s COVID diagnosis will impact how Americans view their pandemic risk

In medicine, there’s a saying: anecdote isn’t data. But what happens when the world’s most famous data point gets sick with Covid?
President Donald Trump has for months publicly downplayed the risk from the virus, eschewing the use of masks himself, among his staff and at his rallies. That’s despite the fact that a prime vehicle for transmission is groups of people talking loudly in contained spaces — Washington in a nutshell.
Now he’s sick. While Trump is in a higher-risk group because of his age and weight, he’ll also receive the best medical care on the planet. How severe his illness is and how quickly he recovers is likely to have a huge impact on the public’s perception of the disease and its risk.
On Friday morning, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, a regular booster of Trump, raised the possibility that if Trump gets better quickly, it may cause people to take the virus less seriously.
“There’s a lot of people out there that say, ‘If I get it, I die,’” Kilmeade said on Fox. “What if the most famous person in the world gets it and in 10 days is back out? Doesn’t that also send a message that you can say whatever you want in stats and graphs, but I give you an example of somebody who is in that danger age of 74, who is out there, gets it and beats it — could that also send a message?”
Public health is a profession of percentages. With an infection like Covid-19, the vast majority of people recover. Age, pre-existing illnesses, weight and other health factors can influence a patient’s chances, but there’s no perfect way to predict any one individual’s outcome. Measures like mask-wearing and social distancing are meant to better the odds by getting fewer people sick and protecting the most vulnerable.
The “anecdote isn’t data” saying is a direct reflection of that. Just because one person recovers from an illness, or responds to a drug, doesn’t mean that everyone — or anyone — else will. Health professionals look at data from research, and base their advice to medical professionals and the public on the same.
“There is a genuine concern, and it’s not an unreasonable concern, that in the event that the president was to experience only mild illness, then he might seek to use that as evidence to further suggest that this is not as serious as what it actually is,” said Adam Kamradt-Scott, who researches how governments and organizations deal with health challenges at the United States Studies Centre. “That would be unfortunate, would be the diplomatic way of putting it.”
More than 200,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, and many more have been hospitalized. Trump is having mild symptoms so far. Most cases stay relatively mild, and it will take several days to know how Trump’s turns out.
“In many patients who do get very sick it happens around day eight to 10,” said Helen Boucher, chief of the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts Medical Center.
In past remarks, Trump has made clear that older Americans are at risk. “It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, if they have other problems, that’s what it really affects,” Trump said at a rally on Sept. 21.
But he’s also downplayed the risk for others, particularly the young. “Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. It affects virtually nobody,” Trump said at the rally. “It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools!”
Others in his administration have done the same, such as his health adviser Scott Atlas, who has said that more Americans than other experts say may have some level of immunity to the virus.
Trump’s political support is strongest with older Americans: An Aug. 13 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of registered voters over age 65 favored Trump, his best showing.
That same group is most at risk of death and hospitalization. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people aged 65 to 74 are five times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus than people aged 18 to 29. Deaths in that group are higher as well: Out of 194,091 Covid-involved fatalities the CDC has counted in the U.S., 26% of them were in the 65-to-74 age group.
“This is a reminder that COVID-19 is an ongoing threat to our country and can happen to anyone,” said Tom Frieden, director of the CDC under the Obama administration and a frequent critic of Trump’s response to the virus.
On Fox News, another of the network’s hosts, Stuart Varney, raised a similar possible reaction from the public.
“The immediate reaction of a lot of people will be, ‘My goodness, if the president of the United States can get it, maybe I can, too.’”


fortune--2020-10-03--Trump’s capital gains tax cut will cost much more than we think

In the early 1990s, a prolonged, heated debate broke out between economists and budget scorekeepers in Washington. On one side were those at Treasury who argued President George H.W. Bush’s proposed capital gains tax cut would stimulate enough activity to pay for itself. On the other side were some scorekeepers in Congress who insisted that it would not.
These “capital gains wars” have ebbed and flowed since then, and are sure to resurface once again as President Trump calls for a new reduction in the federal capital gains rate—a proposal that stands in sharp contrast to former Vice President Biden’s proposed increase on million-dollar earners.
Today, as in the past, those in favor of the reducing rates will argue that when capital gains rates are too high, people invest less and generate smaller gains to tax. The tax cut, they’ll say, will spur investment and potentially even pay for itself.
But if this argument was thin in the past, it’s even weaker now. Over the last few decades, the nature of capital in the U.S. has changed, and there’s plenty of new evidence to suggest that investors are less sensitive to changes in the capital gains rate than many advocates insist. In recent years, the average annual capital gains tax rate paid to the federal government has hovered around 19%. Today, there’s good reason to think it could rise to around 40% before, at least in terms of tax revenue, the costs outweigh the benefits.
Why are things so different than even a few decades ago? On a national level, only about a quarter of capital gains represent stock sales of individual stockholders. About half of all gains now flow through pass-through businesses—an entity type that played a minor role before 1986.
In terms of responding to changes in tax rates, portfolio managers at hedge funds, private equity firms, and other pass-throughs may react differently than individual stockholders do, especially when it comes to earnings in the form of carried interest payments to investment managers themselves, which amount to $50–100 billion in recent years.
But even among individuals, we’ve seen new developments. We now live in an era of much lower inflation and a different tax code. With index funds and ETFs increasing in popularity, more individual investors may not realize gains when part of their portfolio changes value. Put simply, the environment and way people invest has changed, which can moderate the effects of capital gains cuts or hikes and influence estimates of the “revenue-maximizing rate.” We also have 30 more years of data since 1990, which lets us develop more accurate and policy-relevant estimates.
Despite these developments, it might be surprising to learn that our official methods for scoring capital gains taxes haven’t changed much since the early 90s. The prevailing methods result in projections that likely underestimate both the true cost of tax cuts and the revenue potential of tax hikes. An up-to-date method would estimate revenue gains and losses using a smaller elasticity, which is economist-speak for the degree to which changes in the tax rate affect investor behavior.
If the models were updated, we’d see different estimates. For example, the Tax Policy Center currently uses estimates from a 1990 Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) report—and it’s not alone. These models are still being used by nearly every respected scorekeeping organization, both inside and outside the government.
Modernizing these models matters because a five percentage point capital gains tax rate increase may generate more than twice the revenue that official models suggest. In estimates I produced with Ole Agersnap and Coly Elhai at Princeton, we find that this modest increase could generate another $8 to $20 billion in annual federal tax revenue, which is enough to pay for substantial coronavirus relief payments for millions of Americans. Relatedly, getting more accurate scores would make it clear that cutting capital gains taxes right now would be more expensive than previously thought, and therefore less likely.
Updating official models just scratches the surface of needed efforts to modernize the tax system and the taxation of capital. But these small steps could help provide crucial relief to many Americans who need it and help prevent poorly targeted capital gains tax cuts from being enacted.
Owen Zidar is a professor of economics at Princeton University.


fortune--2020-10-04--The new workwear attire brand that launched when everyone is working from home

This is an installment in a special series, Startup Year One, interviewing startup founders about the major lessons they learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.
While it might seem counterintuitive, getting dressed for work—even for working at home—is actually an even greater burden and source of anxiety for women professionals in the Zoom era.
So says Showly Wang, who with cofounder Amy Jiang, recently launched Pairess, a self-described feminist, direct-to-consumer fashion brand on a mission to help women succeed professionally with stylish apparel that’s also functional. (Think real pockets that actually fit a phone and machine washable fabrics.)
Fortune recently spoke with Wang and Jiang about how the first few months are going and what the pair plans to do next.
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Amy Jiang and Showly Wang, cofounders of Pairess. Courtesy of Pairess
Fortune: Could you tell me a bit about your backgrounds? What were you doing professionally prior to launching Pairess?
Amy Jiang: I graduated from Harvard in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in statistics, and have experience working in strategic and analytical roles. Before Pairess, I was on the strategy and analytics team at Affirm, where Showly and I worked closely together. My role was to prioritize, measure, and execute on different product initiatives including Affirm’s in-store expansion and online checkout optimization. Prior to that, I worked in management consulting, leading projects for retail banks on their risk, pricing, and branch network strategies. It was actually during this job where I realized the huge gap in the women’s workwear market. I hated having to go to the dry cleaners every week and not having pockets to put my badge, phone, and wallet in while running around and outside the office. My work clothes were also tight and restrictive, and I dreaded getting dressed for work everyday.
Showly Wang: I graduated from Stanford in 2013, and my background is in luxury apparel and retail technology. From a young age, I loved fashion, but considered it only a hobby until I job shadowed a category manager at Sephora and interned at Oscar de la Renta, which led me to a buying office role at Neiman Marcus Group. There I learned the ins and outs of running an omnichannel apparel business and had an opportunity to join Neiman’s e-commerce product management team, working with marketing and engineering to grow online revenue. I also was working as a part-time stylist for Stitch Fix, because I missed the creative side of my buying office role. These two experiences made me fascinated with digital innovation within retail and customer experience, and I was inspired to pivot to retail consumer technology at Affirm, where I led marketing and operations for in-store products, launching and growing consumer adoption with the company’s largest partners.
The brand anticipates a longer-term shift in consumer demand for fashion products that prioritize comfort and functionality. Courtesy of Pairess
What inspired the launch of Pairess? What makes it ideal for the new “work from home” environment?
Jiang: Pairess, which is a portmanteau for “a pair of pants and a dress,” makes clothes for work that are machine-washable, are super comfortable, and have big roomy pockets. We were inspired to start Pairess by our personal pain points with our work clothes, but what really galvanized us to take the leap was learning that the lack of functionality in women’s clothes is rooted in gender stereotypes that value women for their appearance over what they can accomplish. So as two feminists, we built Pairess to give women a stylish and functional work wardrobe that makes life easier, so that clothes are the least of their worries while they’re out here breaking the glass ceiling.
Wang: Even before the pandemic, it was critical to us to balance fashion and function in women’s work wardrobes, and this core design principle makes our pieces ideal for a work-from-home wardrobe. Consumers are looking for clothes that are comfy like pajamas but still polished and professional enough for their most important video calls. We had one customer tell us she wore our lounge set in a video meeting with her all-male C-suite, and that it was empowering to be dressed and ready for the meeting while feeling like she was wearing pajamas. We want our customers to feel empowered when they wear our clothes and to feel a sense of “I can accomplish whatever I want and nothing, least of all my clothes, will hold me back.”
Retailers have taken quite a hit during the pandemic, especially for traditional workwear sellers. So the timing seems hit or miss. What has it been like opening a D2C clothing business during a pandemic? What has it been like to work with supply chain partners and develop the initial capsule collection?
Wang: We feel lucky to have launched during the pandemic, because it’s made our clothes even more relevant, but it has certainly come with challenges. We actually had plans to launch a capsule of office clothes in April 2020 and had to pause as our supply chain partners in Manhattan were forced to shut down. We took that time to ask women about their work-from-home wardrobe frustrations, which led us to pivot into creating a “work-from-anywhere” wardrobe with chic loungewear, tops for Zoom, and polished pants that felt like pajamas. When our partners safely reopened in June, we restarted parts of the design process to create this new capsule. We speedily worked with our pattern maker and fit model (with masks and socially distanced) to design a lounge set and turned our dresses into tops.
The pandemic also upended core parts of our go-to-market strategy which was centered around physical pop-up events and activating graduates who were about to enter the workforce or start summer internships. We’re now focused on reaching digital networks of professional women and are keeping an eye on what school and work environments look like throughout the fall. We’re definitely seeing the glass as half full, as the pandemic has created some favorable conditions for our market and evened the playing field. Incumbent retailers like Banana Republic and Ann Taylor were already on the decline and are now failing even faster. Established brands are pulling back their marketing budgets, trying to save their cash to weather the storm. This leaves a significant opportunity for us to seize.
Jiang: Our supply chain partners have been incredible to work with. We’re proud to partner with local women-run factories in New York City who work with well-known designer brands, providing deep expertise and the highest quality manufacturing. We also only use fabrics that pass quality and durability tests with the highest ratings, and when possible, try to use surplus material that we purchase from local NYC brands that otherwise would go to waste. It’s been a bit of trial and error, but our partners are extremely collaborative and patient with us as we learn manufacturing on the fly. Luckily, we have a clear vision of the clothes we want to make, and between great partners and a lot of Googling, we’ve been able to bring it to life.
Pairess is creating products for the future of work that will transition well from sheltering at home to being back out in the world. Courtesy of Pairess
That said, what has it been like to secure funding for Pairess? Is it primarily self-funded, VC-backed, or some mixture of both?
Jiang: We’re currently bootstrapped with our own personal savings, which has taught us to be really frugal and scrappy. We’ll likely need to raise outside money once we’ve achieved a few key milestones and have more traction.
Post-pandemic and five years down the road, where do you see Pairess in the market?
Jiang: We aim to be the first workwear brand that women turn to whether they’re working from home or from an office, that understands their wardrobe needs in all work-related environments. Back in our earliest days when we were doing market research and interviewing different women, we’d ask for their favorite casual clothing brands. And they’d list out a bunch of brands like Anthropologie, Madewell, etc., but when we asked the same question for their work clothes, they’d pause and struggle to find an answer: “Uh, I go to Macy’s or Nordstrom. Maybe Ann Taylor. But their clothes never fit right.” In five years, we want women to excitedly answer this question with “Pairess.”
Wang: The current definition of “workwear” has expanded to include the most casual end of the spectrum, but we do also believe that office spaces will reopen in certain industries, creating an opportunity to further disrupt the traditional workwear space with our approach of balancing aesthetics and function. Women have been conditioned to expect a tradeoff between aesthetics and functionality in their fashion choices, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We have a lofty long-term goal of shifting fashion design standards so women expect stylish, beautiful products that are also high-functioning and comfortable. The pandemic has already accelerated this shift in consumer behavior, and this is where the future of fashion will be.


fortune--2020-10-04--Here’s how much Trump’s campaign has been hurt by the pandemic

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Even before President Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, his reelection prospects had been grievously harmed by the pandemic. Two recently released reports suggest that the pandemic’s damage to his campaign may have been even worse than it appeared.
In the counterfactual world of no pandemic, at least four election prediction models based partially or entirely on economic factors suggest Trump could have been a formidable candidate, using economic data available early this year. The new reports add data not previously available that would be exceptionally favorable to an incumbent running for reelection. Without the pandemic overwhelming all other factors, the new data would have enabled Trump to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters and to strengthen his case in the campaign’s closing weeks.
Specifically, the Census Bureau’s latest release of “Income and Poverty in America” reports that median household income grew more in 2019 than in any previous year on record: 6.8%. Measures of inequality declined: Income grew much more among Black and Hispanic people than among white people, and median earnings increased three times faster for women than for men. Poverty fell to the lowest level since 1959, and among Black and Hispanic people it fell to the lowest levels ever.
Separately, the Fed’s triennial “Survey of Consumer Finances” shows further evidence of decreasing inequality. Using data collected between mid-2016 and early 2020, it found that incomes fell during that period among families at the top of the wealth distribution and rose among those in the middle and bottom. Incomes also declined among families with a college degree and rose among those with a high school diploma. Average incomes fell for white non-Hispanic families and rose slightly for Black non-Hispanic families.
Early in the year, before that data was known and before the pandemic arrived, Trump already looked strong in prediction models. In February, he was the clear favorite in the model used by the Oxford Economics consulting firm, based on the pioneering work of Yale professor Ray Fair. As the incumbent—his opponent was then unknown—he would get 55% of the vote, said the model, which has correctly called 16 of the past 18 elections. Just three months later, with some 40 million Americans suddenly unemployed, Trump had been transformed into an underdog of historic proportions. The model now recently said he’d lose the popular vote to Biden 65% to 35% for the worst defeat of an incumbent party since Republican Warren Harding demolished Democrat James Cox in 1920.
The Economist’s model, recalculated every day since early March, showed Trump and Biden equally matched during that month, trading the lead every few days. Their paths diverged decisively on April 1 and have never re-crossed. As of October 2, the model showed Biden winning 340 electoral votes to Trump’s 198.
A model developed at Chapman University in Orange, California, has predicted the popular-vote winner in 15 of the past 16 elections and shows Biden winning by 10 points. Changes in GDP and jobs in the election year are major factors, so it’s likely that if last year’s economic trends had been uninterrupted by the pandemic, Trump could have been tough to beat. FiveThirtyEight’s prediction model, which includes economic data, began on June 1 and has shown Biden strongly ahead every day. As of October 2, it predicted Biden winning 335 electoral votes to Trump’s 203.
None of this means that if Trump loses, he and his supporters can blame a stroke of terrible luck. Luck is what you make of it, and some argue that he could have made the pandemic a political advantage, calling on the nation to unite against the coronavirus and casting himself as a Republican FDR fighting the Great Depression. In addition, non-economic factors, notably the thousands of protests over racial inequities and police behavior, may play a larger than usual role this year.
But Trump’s opponents should not believe, as many did eight months ago, that he couldn’t be reelected. He could have been, and the latest data suggest his prospects might have been even better than they appeared pre-pandemic. Now, how will having COVID-19 affect his chances? The experience of the year so far says: Assume nothing.


fortune--2020-10-04--In video address, Trump thanks Americans for their support, foreign leaders for their ‘condolences’

President Donald Trump sought to dispel questions about the severity of his coronavirus infection by calling for a new round of stimulus, posting the second video of himself in two days and launching a fresh round of campaigning by top supporters.
In the video, posted on Twitter after nearly 24 hours in the hospital, Trump said “I feel much better now” and “I think I’ll be back soon” to the re-election campaign. His doctor, Sean Conley, said in a Saturday night update that the president had made “substantial progress” and “spent most of the afternoon conducting business.”
Yet Trump also lashed out in private at his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, after learning that it was Meadows who told reporters earlier in the day that the president’s vital signs looked troubling, and that the next 48 hours would be crucial as the president wasn’t yet on a clear path to recovery.
That contradicted a public readout of Trump’s condition from Conley— signaling that inside the White House, questions still linger about the president’s health as he entered a second full day at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Trump’s re-election campaign is now mobilizing allies to counteract that image through appearances on television and other media, according to people familiar with the plans who also described Trump’s displeasure with Meadows. The effort by allies to show Trump making a strong recovery was under way Saturday, with the addition of Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller to the guest lineup of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
And the president’s campaign launched “Operation MAGA” to send out surrogates who would attest to his vitality and keep his voter base motivated until Trump recovers enough to resume campaigning in person.
Covid cases increase
Even so, the virus spread further in the president’s circle as Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and Trump debate coach, said he checked into a hospital on Saturday with “mild symptoms” of Covid-19.
In an update released by the White House Saturday night, Conley said that while the president was “not yet out of the woods, the team remains cautiously optimistic.” He added that Trump had received without complications a second dose of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s Remdesivir, which is authorized for use in hospitalized Covid-19 patients.
The physician told reporters earlier in the day that Trump had experienced “mild cough and some nasal congestion and fatigue” on Thursday but all of those symptoms “are resolving and improving.”
The remarks contradicting Conley’s upbeat account of Trump’s health initially were attributed to a person familiar with the situation and included in a pool report shared with the White House press corps. A video later surfaced on the internet showing Meadows talking to the reporters.
‘We were concerned’
Although Conley said Trump has been fever-free for more than 24 hours, the physician declined to directly answer several questions about the president’s health, including how high his fever was on Thursday or whether he has ever been on supplemental oxygen to help him breathe.
Meadows said in a Fox News interview on Saturday night that Trump is “doing really well now” but on Friday had suffered from a fever and reduced blood-oxygen saturation.
“Yesterday morning we were concerned with that,” he said. “He had a fever, and his blood oxygen level had dropped rapidly.”
Conley also created some confusion himself by putting the timeline of the president’s diagnosis at 72 hours — longer than previously announced. Later Saturday, he issued a statement correcting his remarks and reiterating that Trump was first diagnosed with Covid on Thursday evening.
Trump praised the doctors and nurses at Walter Reed on Saturday. “With their help, I am feeling well!” he tweeted. In another tweet, he called for lawmakers to reach agreement on another round of pandemic relief to jolt the U.S. economy.
Conley said Trump hasn’t experienced trouble breathing. His blood-oxygen saturation level is between 96% and 98% and Trump isn’t currently on supplemental oxygen, Conley said. Trump didn’t need oxygen on Thursday or Friday after he was brought to the hospital, but the doctor didn’t say specifically if the president was administered oxygen on Friday while he was still at the White House.
The doctor declined to say when the president last received a negative coronavirus test and also declined to say how Trump was infected, calling the question “irrelevant” to his care. Asked about Trump’s risk factors for Covid-19, Conley said: “He’s 74, he’s male and he’s slightly overweight. Other than that, he’s very healthy.”
Trump is only the most prominent case in what has become an outbreak of coronavirus among top Republican leaders. Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, and Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel have both tested positive.
Three Republican senators have said they also tested positive this week: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Mike Lee of Utah. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and former top aide Kellyanne Conway said on Twitter late Friday that she, too, had contracted the virus.
Christie Hospitalized
Christie said Saturday he’d tested positive. “In consultation with my doctors, I checked myself into Morristown Medical Center this afternoon,” he said on Twitter. “While I am feeling good and only have mild symptoms, due to my history of asthma we decided this is an important precautionary measure.”
Trump traveled to New Jersey on Thursday for a fundraiser after learning that a close aide, HopeHicks, had tested positive for coronavirus infection. CDC guidelines call for people who are in close contact with infected people to quarantine themselves for 14 days and practice social distancing at all times.
Conley said that he had made the call for Trump to go to Walter Reed, despite evidently mild symptoms, “because he’s the president of the United States.”
Some of the infected Republicans, including Lee, Tillis and Conway, attended a Sept. 26 event at the White House where Trump announced he would nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.
Though the event was held outdoors in the White House Rose Garden, there were few public health precautions.
More than 150 people sat side-by-side in the audience. Almost no one wore masks. Lee was seen hugging other guests. And many of the guests participated in crowded indoor receptions as well.
Trump entered the hospital Friday evening after announcing earlier in the day that he and first lady Melania Trump had been diagnosed with the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Doctors have administered a pair of advanced treatments to the president: Remdesivir and an experimental “antibody cocktail” made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. that doesn’t yet have FDA approval.
Trump posted his first video to Twitter since the diagnosis as he arrived at Walter Reed on Friday evening. “I’m doing very well but we’re going to make sure that things work out,” he said.


fortune--2020-10-05--How President Trump got special access to his coronavirus treatment

Housing flips the recession script : Prices will keep rising for up to a year , but here ’ s @ @ @ @ @

It turns out that when the President of the United States contracts a virus which has killed more than a million people around the world—more than 200,000 people in America alone—he can get some special treatment. Literally.
The debacle of President Trump’s COVID diagnosis and a cascade of revelations that multiple GOP elected officials and, potentially supporters who have attended events, have contracted coronavirus is a dizzying story. The President’s own physician, Dr. Sean Conley, delivered a press conference Saturday morning which raised more questions than it answered about Trump’s health after he was airlifted to the Walter Reed medical center on Friday.
The timeline Conley provided didn’t match up with what the White House had previously said, and he later provided a statement saying he misspoke. According to the latest information, Trump was diagnosed on Thursday and did not begin receiving an experimental COVID drug from Regeneron, an antibody cocktail, until Friday.
Additionally, he’s receiving Gilead’s remdesivir, which has gained Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency authorization for some of the sicker COVID patients and is an experimental antiviral that’s been in development to attack infectious diseases for more than a decade (and has been used on many patients already). On Sunday, it was unveiled that he’s also on dexamethasone, a decades-old steroid which attacks inflammation and has typically been used on patients with serious cases of COVID-19.
Trump’s access to the experimental Regeneron drug cocktail, a more unique therapeutic without the emergency designation, speaks volumes about the state of drug regulation. The treatment, like Eli Lilly’s similar therapy, could very well receive FDA emergency authorization in the future, although it hasn’t to date.
How exactly did he get it then? Trump has always been a proponent of “right-to-try” drug laws—wherein sick patients can receive unapproved therapies if there’s simply no other option.
But what happened here is different. The President was directly cleared by the FDA to get the Regeneron drug under the agency’s expanded access program.
“Right-to-try is similar to expanded access, however, the primary difference is FDA permission for use is not required,” as one industry group explains.
The FDA had to grant specific permission for Trump himself to receive the Regeneron treatment. The company’s CEO, Leonard Schleifer, said as much in an interview with the New York Times. “All we can say is that they asked to be able to use it, and we were happy to oblige,” he said. “When it’s the President of the United States, of course, that gets—obviously—gets our attention.”
Expanded access isn’t unique to the President. Thousands of patients with debilitating diseases who have a dearth of available treatment options use that process every year. But in this case, it appears that Trump had a straight line to that access on top of some of the best medical care in the country.


fortune--2020-10-04--Want a second home during COVID? These Zillow vets have invented a radically less expensive way to b

Want a second home during COVID? These Zillow vets have invented a radically less expensive way to buy one

There’s an old truism about vacation homes: Nature wants them back.
Indeed between the maintenance, upkeep, taxes, hassle of finding short-term renters, and typically small number of days per year homeowners are actually in residence, vacation homes are generally a great way to make memories—and a poor way to invest your money.
Now two veterans of Zillow have a new spin on second homes—they want to pair you up with likeminded buyers to own just the amount of the house you’ll actually use. Their company, called Pacaso (pronounced like the painter), launched this week. Pacaso’s chairman is Zillow cofounder and former CEO Spencer Rascoff; its CEO is Dotloop founder and former Zillow executive Austin Allison. The company says it has raised $17 million in Series A funding, from investors including Maveron, Crosscut, Global Founders Capital, Howard Schultz, and other Zillow and Amazon executives. The startup has also secured $250 million in debt financing to purchase shares of homes.
Allison says Pacaso is addressing a basic mismatch in the marketplace. “Ten million people own second homes in America. Most of them sit vacant for 11 months of the year. Meanwhile there are tens of millions of people that aspire to own a second home, but can’t afford it,” he told Fortune.
So how do you find your dream home? On Pacaso’s site you can fill out a form with your desired location and price range. Then Pacaso works with local real estate agents to find a home that meets your criteria, and pairs you up with other buyers seeking a similar hideaway. (As of now, Pacaso deals in only turnkey homes, no fixer-uppers.) If Pacaso finds a group or individual who wants 50% of a property, they’ll set up an LLC for you, then buy the other half straightaway to speed up the deal, with the end goal of reselling the remaining shares.
Pacaso will offer only turnkey properties, such as this vacation house in Hilton Head, S.C. Courtesy of Pacasso
For a 1% annual fee based on the purchase price, Pacaso will handle all the annoying details of managing a property from afar, from paying the utilities to finding a plumber to come fix a leaky faucet. Part of each monthly fee is set aside for future repairs and maintenance, such as that new roof which the Pacaso algorithm estimates you may need in, say, 17 years. At tax time every owner will simply get a K-1.
Owners won’t ever interact or meet each other, though Allison said at one of the company’s first homes in Napa, Calif., one family invited their friends up for a visit—and the other family promptly purchased the last remaining share of the house.
Allison walked through the math on one of the company’s first sales, a $1.9 million home in Napa. The operating costs including taxes would typically run about $40,000 a year. But Pacaso sliced this particular home up into 8 shares, with a tranche going for as little as $117,000 down (they work with First Republic bank to provide owners with up to 50% financing). Monthly costs are $600 for each one-eighth share.
With every Pacaso property, owners book time on a rolling 24-month calendar via the company’s app, with an algorithm calculating how many prime vacation days and overall time each owner has to “spend.” Part of the idea, says Allison, is to hook up a diverse group of owners. “This wouldn’t work if it was all families from San Francisco with kids in ski school that wanted to visit Tahoe on school breaks,” he points out. But one family with kids, plus some retirees, plus a couple like Allison and his wife who prefer the less crowded “shoulder seasons” in Tahoe starts to make more sense and fill out the calendar.
The company is launching as real estate has been one sector which has defied the typical patterns of a recession, and has risen sharply since March, as Fortune’s Shawn Tully outlined in a recent story. “These increases are unsustainable, but prices will keep rising in double digits for another six months to a year,” notes Ed Pinto, director of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Housing Center and the former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae. “America is running out of inventory. Buyers can’t buy houses that aren’t for sale, so they’re bidding up the prices of the relatively few on the market. That means price increases will keep racing until more inventory comes on. And new supply will come on slowly.” In the piece, Pinto predicts that prices will remain elevated until a wave of foreclosures finally ends the party. But in the meantime, those high prices are making second homes less affordable, which could make Pacaso’s model more attractive.
Going forward, Allison says Pacaso will move toward offering “enhanced personalization,” where your clothes will be arranged in the closet and your favorite wine is on the counter before you arrive. For now, each owner is guaranteed a locked closet where they can stash personal items and gear such as skis or golf clubs.
As for Allison, he and his wife already own a second home in Lake Tahoe, but he doesn’t plan to divvy up shares given that he spends half the year there.
But he’s still angling to be a Pacaso customer. “I’m going to be buying a Pacaso in Scottsdale. I’m shopping right now,” he says with a grin.