fortune--2020-01-06--These 10 Journalists Deserve Justice in 2020

Incarceration, public scrutiny, and harm do not fall under most job descriptions, but for many journalists around the globe, those risks come with the territory. When journalists set out to seek and expose the truth, they do so knowing that individuals and governments may retaliate, often leading to cases of foul play, unjust incarceration, and wrongful death.
While there are countless such cases that deserve justice immediately, Fortune, along with 36 other news organizations, co-publishes a list of the “10 Most Urgent” press freedom cases monthly. Compiled by the One Free Press Coalition (OFPC) in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), these monthly lists have proven to spark real change.
Of the 56 journalists featured on the 10 Most Urgent lists in 2019, at least 10 are no longer behind bars, including Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in Myanmar, and Miguel Mora and Lucía Pineda Ubau in Nicaragua. Not long after Turkish journalist Pelin Unker was featured on the 10 Most Urgent List, her case was dismissed by courts. Additionally, Indian journalist Rana Ayyub expressed to CPJ and IWMF how helpful the list was at a time when she needed public support.
Some journalists who have been featured have returned to their normal lives, including Moroccan journalist Hajar Raissouni, who recently celebrated her wedding after her release.
Many of the individuals who have appeared on the monthly lists have been recognized and rewarded for the quality of their work. For instance, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo appeared at CPJ’s 2019 IPFA awards and spoke about how significant advocacy on their behalf was. They were also able to accept their Pulitzer Prize in person. Mora and Pineda Ubau were CPJ 2019 IPFA recipients, and Anna Nimiriano was awarded the 2019 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, along with Pineda Ubau. Filipino journalist Maria Ressa was named one of TIME’s Most Influential People in 2019.
While these journalists have risked losing their livelihoods for the work they’ve done, the future of journalism itself stands to lose something, too, if ongoing cases remain unheard. Following are this month’s 10 most urgent cases of journalists who are or were killed, incarcerated, or seeking justice. (You can read last month’s list here.)
Malta acknowledges mishandling of journalist’s murder case.
Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, has announced he will resign on Jan. 12 in connection with the government’s mishandling of the investigation into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death. The Panama Papers investigative reporter was killed in an October 2017 car bomb blast. Two years later, a public inquiry was initiated, and three senior members of Muscat’s administration stepped down over allegations of involvement in the murder, while three men are currently in detention in relation to the events.
Egyptian journalist on hunger strike tortured and hospitalized.
Reports surfaced Dec. 16, 2019 that Esraa Abdel Fattah of banned website Tahrir News had been hospitalized in connection with her hunger strike. The reporter and social media coordinator had been detained two months at that point, charged with membership in a banned group, spreading false news and misusing social media platforms to disrupt national security. She began a hunger strike in October 2019 to demand an investigation into her allegations of mistreatment and torture.
Six years in jail for Chinese writer serving life sentence.
This month Uighur scholar, writer and blogger Ilham Tohti is serving his sixth year of a life sentence. Uighurbiz, the Chinese- and Uighur-language website he founded in 2006 with a focus on social issues, was shuttered for its “separatist” ideas (a charge Tohti denied) after his arrest in 2014. China is the leading jailer of journalists and allows Tohti’s wife and family members to visit him for only 30 minutes every three months.
4. Agnès Ndirubusa and the team at Iwacu (Burundi)
Four Burundi reporters imprisoned and awaiting trial.
Four journalists were arrested in Burundi in October while covering clashes in the country’s Bubanza Province. Senior political reporter Agnès Ndirubusa broadcast reporter Christine Kamikazi, English-language reporter Egide Harerimana and photojournalist Térence Mpozenzi face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the charges of undermining state security.
Imprisoned Russian journalist’s whereabouts unknown.
Aleksandr Valov’s lawyer has not been able to contact or locate him. The editor-in-chief and founder of local news site BlogSochi was arrested Jan. 19, 2018 and is currently serving a six-year sentence on trumped up extortion charges. Valov narrated a livestream video showing police beating him during the arrest.
Trial of detained Venezuelan photographer repeatedly delayed.
The trial of freelance photographer Jesús Medina has repeatedly been postponed, with the date currently set for Jan. 30. The only Venezuelan journalist imprisoned, according to CPJ’s 2019 prison census, has been held in pretrial detention at Ramo Verde military prison since August 2018. He is accused of criminal association and inciting hate.
Demands for answers in Khashoggi murder persist into new decade.
The new decade arrives without an independent criminal investigation into the 2018 high-profile, brazen killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside Istanbul’s Saudi consulate. Calls have gone unheeded for the U.S. and UN to probe the Saudi crown prince’s role in the “extrajudicial killing,” as have calls for the White House to release intelligence reports. Meanwhile, the Kingdom ended 2019 holding 26 journalists in prison.
Corruption reporter serving time while government bans Internet.
While Iran implemented an Internet ban in November in response to protests over rising gas prices, Masoud Kazemi sat in prison on charges stemming from 2018 Twitter posts about government corruption. Editor-in-chief of the monthly Sedaye Parsi political magazine, Kazemi was sentenced in June to four-plus years, found guilty of spreading misinformation and insulting the supreme leader and other Iranian officials. For an additional two years, he will be banned from working as a journalist.
Communications blackout slows case of jailed editor in weakening health.
Arrests in Kashmir constitute India’s only two cases of jailed journalists, according to CPJ tracking. And the region’s ongoing communications shutdown that started August 5—the longest ever imposed in a democracy—has slowed trial hearings and updates to family members. Kin of Kashmiriyat news website editor Qazi Shibli didn’t know his whereabouts for more than a month after his July arrest for allegedly reporting on Twitter about troop movements. The family has since expressed serious concerns about his health and hired a lawyer’s help to petition for bail.
Freelance journalist serving 2.5 years in Russian prison.
In October 2019, a military court in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don sentenced Nariman Memedeminov to two years and six months in prison, convicted of making public calls for terrorism online. That followed the 2018 raid of the freelance journalist’s home and his arrest. His coverage included livestreamed trials of Muslim minority Crimean Tatar activists and interviews with their family members and lawyers, since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
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fortune--2020-01-06--The 4 Main Reasons People Change Careers

What Goes Into the Production of a New Girl Scout Cookie Brand

Ever wonder whether you picked the right career path, way back when—and, if not, whether you could make the jump to a different field? The job market right now looks ideal for making a change, partly because many employers are so in need of new hires that they’re often willing to overlook your lack of experience in a given role and train you on the job. Not only that, but heading for greener pastures is a tried-and-true way of making more money, at least for now.
Even so, when people decide to try a totally different line of work than they’ve pursued so far, it usually isn’t only about the Benjamins, according to a recent study. Job site Indeed polled 662 people working in a wide range of jobs and industries who had changed jobs recently, and found that 49% had gone into a whole new occupation—from teaching to finance, say, or marketing to engineering. The 4 main reasons why they steered the wheel into another direction?:
1. A better salary
79% said they left their erstwhile gigs in order to, yes, earn more elsewhere.
2. Lack of professional challenges
78% said they were not feeling challenged by their work
3. Career opportunities
77% attributed it to not seeing a clear path to career advancement ahead.
4. Inflexible work circumstances
79% cited a lack of flexibility as a cause for dissatisfaction in their former careers, like the option to work from home or to choose different schedules. (Note to employers: More and more, candidates, and not only career changers, are looking for nontraditional benefits—skills training, career coaching, and telecommuting in particular.)
Thinking of making a career change? One insight from the Indeed data: Don’t rush into anything. The average career changer took 11 months to plan his or her switch to a new field. “It does take, first, some introspection,” says Paul Wolfe, senior VP of global human resources at Indeed, who changed careers himself (from customer service to HR) two decades ago. “You need to identify which of your skills are the most portable. Look at job ads in the field you’re aiming for, and be honest with yourself. Analyze whether you have, or can acquire, the traits they want.”
At the same time, be sure you’ve figured out exactly why you want to leave your current career. “Sometimes, people don’t really want to go into a whole new area,” Wolfe points out. “They just need to keep on the path they’re already on, but in a different job, or with a different company.” Take your time and think it through. Instead of a career change, maybe what you need right now is an overdue promotion, or some strategic skills training, or both.
Unsure whether you’d really like doing the job you’ve set your sights on? Wolfe recommends finding, through social media or your real-life network, someone already entrenched in that field, and asking whether you can “shadow” him or her for a day or two. “Shadowing can help tremendously, as can informational interviews,” he says—referring to the kind where you’re not asking for a job, just gathering information. Either approach can be useful in pinpointing which skills you’ll need to bring with you: “Ask the person you’re shadowing which skills matter most in this field, and how he or she got into it.”
The Indeed survey’s most encouraging finding: Almost all (88%) of the career changers said that—despite the effort (and worry) that went into preparing to make their move—they are happier now than they were before. That’s important. “No job is perfect, but we spend so much time at work, it’s really important to find work that we like doing,” says Wolfe. Almost sounds like a New Year’s resolution, doesn’t it?
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—New hires are getting high pay but older employees aren’t getting raises
—What the best workplaces in the world have in common
—No, humanities degrees don’t mean low salaries
—5 proven ways to decrease stress at work
—Ready to jump at that great job offer? Read this first
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fortune--2020-01-06--Donald Trump and the Power of Incumbency

Is Donald Trump on track for re-election? No question in our politics seems to be as salient, and as difficult to answer—at least if history is any judge.
If you are under the age of 30, you would be forgiven for believing that, yes, as a rule the person already inhabiting the White House is always the odds-on favorite to be elected to a second term. That’s because all three presidents you can really remember—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—rather handily won re-election.
“The power of incumbency is not to be sniffed at,” said Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington, who now studies presidential politics and the intersection of economic and political power.
But look back further and you’ll see that a second term hasn’t always been a sure bet. Only 17 of 44 presidents have been elected twice, a success rate for re-election of roughly 38%. And it’s rare for two-term presidencies to run concurrently. A streak of three in a row was repeated only once before in the early days of the Republic by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.
The trend toward second terms in recent years is not random, but a consequence of a consolidation of power in the Executive Branch, said O’Mara, who was previously a policy adviser to then-Vice President Al Gore.
“I think it has shifted because the presidency itself has gotten more powerful—much more powerful than the founders intended,” she said. “One of the reasons we can’t remember much about Rutherford B. Hayes or Benjamin Harrison is that the presidency did not loom as large back then. The parties, Congress, and the courts had much more heft 100 or 150 years ago—and the presidents were less imposing figures, with a few exceptions, Lincoln being one of them.”
Circumstances changed in the 20th Century, as presidents from Roosevelt and Eisenhower to Reagan and Obama harnessed their unique powers as commander-in-chief, the platform provided by mass media, and an increasingly fractious (and thus weaker) Congress to expand the reach of their office.
The ability to drive the news cycle has been especially critical, and it’s an area in which Trump, love him or hate him, undoubtedly excels.
“As President Trump has demonstrated with frightening clarity, presidents dominate the national and media narratives; we see or hear them daily, in Trump’s case often hourly,” observed Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a recent essay entitled “The Power of Incumbency.”
“They wield the powers of government; their policy priorities and re-election campaigns are launched even before their first term begins; and that initial success not only creates an existing campaign organization and donor bases but can also drive the perception that the election is theirs to lose,” Miller concluded.
One way for a challenger to overcome those odds is the economy, as in 1992 when Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush, with an assist from Ross Perot. On that score, at least for now, Trump has the upper hand.
Coming off a year in which the S&P 500 returned a whopping 28.9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 22.3%, the strength of the economy may well persuade voters to stay the course.
“That’s a big headwind for a Democratic candidate to message against,” O’Mara said. Trump has thus landed in a position that is somewhat the inverse of the elder Bush’s.
Bush was a leader voters largely respected, yet they dropped him when they felt economic anxiety. Trump faces high disapproval ratings, yet a second term remains viable for him if voters decide their top priority is to preserve the economic status quo. In this way, Trump’s path could resemble that of Bill Clinton, who overcame high negatives and questions about his leadership by touting a resurgent job market.
“It is interesting that modern America has put such a premium on presidential personality and character and conduct when talking about candidates but, at the same time, when it comes down to it, people routinely vote based on economics,” O’Mara said.
If ‘92 isn’t a match, “1984 is an interesting year to think about,” O’Mara continued, “though it’s not a great comp if you’re a Democrat.”
In ‘84, of course, the once-divisive Ronald Reagan rode a message of optimism and patriotism to a landslide victory over Walter Mondale, a seasoned, serious, and down-to-earth former vice president who sounds a bit like you know who.
What’s odd about the 1984 example, though, is that “the economy for most of Reagan’s first term was the pits,” O’Mara said. “Democrats had a powerful argument that things are not working, but the case for ‘Morning in America’ resonated with the way voters saw things trending.”
The opposite scenario could potentially play out this time: If voters begin to think the economy, dragged down by weakness in the manufacturing sector, is trending in the wrong direction, Trump could suddenly find his support evaporate.
The election of 1976 offers a third template. Jimmy Carter, a relative unknown on the national stage, emerged from a crowded Democratic primary field by pledging to restore the dignity of the Oval Office. He engineered a spectacular upset victory in part because his opponent, Gerald Ford, was never able to shake off the perceived original sin of his presidency, which was the pardon of Richard Nixon.
Though the economy in 1976 had finally broken out of the recession of the previous three years, the recovery didn’t come soon or fast enough to rescue Ford. And Ford, unlike Trump, lacked some of the power of an incumbent in that he had never been elected to national, or even statewide, office on his own. Plus, many key members of the brain trust that had put together the GOP’s recent victories were unavailable to work on the campaign as they were recently incarcerated, yet another parallel to 2020.
Impeachment, of course, is a huge wild card. And we still do not have a clear understanding of when (or even if) a trial in the Senate will happen in the coming weeks.
Then there is the conflict with Iran, which has the potential to escalate quickly and in unpredictable ways.
Though foreign policy rarely plays a decisive role in U.S presidential elections, it is not unheard of. In 1968, for example, the deteriorating situation in Vietnam crippled Lyndon Johnson’s re-election chances, and prompted violent anti-war protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
On the Republican side, Nixon, a flawed but canny campaigner, outlasted primary challenges from Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, and George Romney. Though the economy was buoyant, discord over the war ultimately proved to be too much of a political albatross for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Nixon won.
Not to say that the best case scenario for Democrats is to find their own version of Nixon, but events are moving fast. The main thing to note about 1968, O’Mara said, is just how truly insane was the progression of landscape-altering developments unfolding in staccato fashion on almost a weekly basis, from Prague Spring and the Tet Offensive to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.
“Incumbency is an incredibly powerful factor and more powerful over time as the presidency itself has gotten more powerful,” O’Mara said, “but you have to take everything the experts say with a grain of salt in the age of Trump.”
“We can say here are the rules, here are the patterns, here are the historical precedents, but you can never predict what will happen,” she said. “And especially at a time like this, there are no clear-cut analogies.”
Correction, January 29, 2020: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that no other President had been impeached during their first term. President Andrew Johnson was impeached during his first term in 1868.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How the UN’s climate efforts could change the business world
—The wealthiest members of Congress—and how they made their millions
—What is election hacking—and can it change who wins?
—USPS could privatize as early as next year
—2020 Crystal Ball: Predictions for the economy, politics, technology, and more
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fortune--2020-01-06--CES 2020: Someone Put Air Conditioning in a Baseball Cap

CES might be the launchpad for several technical innovations that will impact the day to day lives of people in the years to come, but it’s also a show where you’ll find entrepreneurs whose focus is … a bit more narrow.
In years past, the show has seen everything from walking cars to smart diapers. And this year is no exception to the glorious strangeness.
Pretty much everyone wears a baseball cap at some point or another, often to keep the sun off of their head and stay a little cooler on a hot summer afternoon. Entrepreneur Steve Feher is taking things to the next level, though, showcasing a cap that has air conditioning built in.
The cap foregoes refrigerants and instead uses thermoelectric technology to produce cooler air that, in turn, lowers the temperature of the scalp—as much as 22 degrees below the ambient temperature. Feher claims that can increase a wearer’s physical endurance.
Feher Research
The cap is a prototype, and Feher is looking for licensees at the show. It’s not exactly a fashion forward item, as the cap needs to hook up to a battery system (which, Feher notes, weighs less than a “high quality pair of running shoes”). The hat prototype itself weighs 305 grams, a bit more than a mini-can of soda. (The production model is expected to weigh a bit less.) Throw in the battery pack and you’re looking at more than 800 grams (just shy of 2 lbs.)
The baseball cap is the latest in Feher’s line of non-traditional air conditioned products. He holds the patents on the technology that powers seat cooling devices in vehicles from Rolls Royce, Lexus and GM, among others. And two years ago, he unveiled an air cooled motorcycle helmet dubbed “Mr Cool”.
More must-read stories from Fortune :
—Apple’s presence at CES is mostly overblown
—7 companies founded in the last 10 years that you now can’t live without
—Electronic health records are creating a ‘new era’ of health care fraud
—2020 Crystal Ball: Predictions for the economy, politics, technology, etc.
—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
—A fitness regime planned by your genes
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-06--What a Weird, Wild Golden Globes Tells Us About This Year’s Oscars

Ricky Gervais was rude and unctuous. Tom Hanks and Ellen DeGeneres both made us cry. Quentin Tarantino rambled on about screenwriters no one had ever heard of. Joaquin Phoenix “rocked the [expletive] boat.” Politics and climate-crisis news crept their way into speeches. And biopics centered on iconic musicians—this year, Elton John and Judy Garland— remained coveted staples of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual fete.
Yes, a lot about this year’s Globes broadcast did feel familiar, including the fact that two old-fashioned movies, Universal’s World War I epic 1917 and Sony’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, scored the night’s four most prestigious awards, respectively: Best Motion Picture/Drama and Best Director for Sam Mendes; and Best Screenplay for Quentin Tarantino and Best Motion Picture/Musical or Comedy. (Once Upon a Time… also earned beloved supporting-actor contender Brad Pitt his second-ever Globe after seven career nominations.)
But most notably, the evening’s results bucked, and for some, disappointed, expectations that streaming giant Netflix, which has spent millions promoting its Best Picture contenders Marriage Story and The Irishman since September, would somehow supplant such old-timey Big Studio entries. Not so much. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, in its laudation of all-things classic showbiz, voted again with its nostalgia-laden heart for two movies that represent just the kind of grandiose “theatrical” films that many have proclaimed are dying in the wake of Marvel’s reign over the box office.
So what do this year’s film winners, which comprised half the evening’s victors outside a handful of worthy TV winners, including Amazon darling Fleabag and HBO breakout hit Succession, mean for this year’s Oscars? It’s complicated.
In the last 20 years, roughly half of all Globes Best Picture winners, whether for Drama or Musical/Comedy, have gone on to also win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. (One could argue that in 2017 both Globes winners, Moonlight and La La Land, each also won Best Picture at the Oscars…. if only for one painfully awkward moment.)
This means 1917 and Once Upon Time… will each enter the final stretch of awards season on equal footing, and are now all but guaranteed Oscar nominations for Best Picture when those are announced Jan. 13.
But did this year’s Globes’ acting winners help narrow the field for Oscar’s favorites?
Not really. Phoenix defied recent speculation of an Adam Driver/Marriage Story takeover by taking home Best Actor in a Drama for Warner Brothers’ Joker, which also won Best Score; Taron Egerton reclaimed 2019 winner Rami Malek’s juicy-British-rock-music-biopic juju with a win for Paramount’s Rocketman; Renée Zellweger bested flashier competition (Bombshell’s Charlize Theron, Marriage Story’s Scarlett Johansson) with a Lead Actress in a Drama win for Roadside Attraction’s Judy; and underdog Awkwafina (a.k.a. Nora Lum) continued her streak as the year’s most endearing new talent for Best Musical/Comedy Lead Actress in A24’s mostly-Chinese-language tearjerker The Farewell. (While younger contenders Egerton and Awkwafina are less likely locks for Oscar nominations as compared to Phoenix and Zellweger, their Globes wins certainly boost their standing with the older-skewing Academy.)
The final question remaining is: Can Netflix net any meaningful love for their awards-season crown jewels The Irishman and Marriage Story?
Both titles have been darlings since their early-fall debuts thanks to a slew of film-critics’ kudos for directors Martin Scorsese and Noah Baumbach, respectively. But along the way, others have shaken up this year’s (painfully truncated) Oscar race, namely director Bong Joon-ho’s satire-thriller Parasite from Neon, which last night won the first ever Best Foreign-Language Film Globe for a Korean film. Interestingly Netflix’s 2019 Best Picture contender Roma earned the same award last year and would go on to net Best Director at the Oscars for Alfonso Cuaron; this means an upset by Korean auteur Bong over establishment heroes Tarantino, Mendes, and Scorsese is now not far a flung.
That’s what makes the coming weeks so critical for Netflix, and all Oscar contenders, really, as upcoming ceremonies for Critics Choice, Directors Guild, Writers Guild, SAG, Producers Guild (and less so, Indie Spirits) all boast larger voting bodies as compared to that of the HFPA, which is comprised of only around 90 members.
So once again it seems it’s best to have enjoyed this year’s Golden Globes as they’re meant to be enjoyed: as Hollywood’s most raw, raucous celebration of the year.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Nicolas Pesce on his R-rated Grudge reboot
—Inside 1917: designing a World War I battlefield
—Little Women director Greta Gerwig and cast reveal how they reinvented a feminist classic
—Aldis Hodge on going to “that dark place” for death row drama Clemency
—What did and didn’t work at the box office in 2019
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-01-06--Just How Safe Are Direct Listings, Really?

Good morning! Hope your 2020 is off to a good start. I’m back in the land of alarm clocks, early morning coffee, and hot-off-the-press deals. Here’s what’s on my radar today:
Direct listings have been a big topic of conversation in tech circles, and venture capitalists and founders alike seem to be fans of the unconventional way of going public. But a new Wall Street Journal report asks: Just how safe are they for Main Street investors?
As a reminder, direct listings are a considerably cheaper method of going public in which only existing shares are sold, no cash is raised for the company, and bank underwriters that help market the deal are largely cut out.
Spotify and Slack both chose this method over a traditional initial public offering. Both companies had smooth debuts. Private market investors made a killing.
Spotify shares opened at $165.90, up nearly 26% from a reference price of $132 set by the New York Stock Exchange the day before. The stock closed at $149.01, valuing the streaming music service at $26.5 billion.
Slack opened at $38.50, 48% above the reference price of $26 that had been set by the NYSE the day before. That nearly tripled Slack’s as a private company, valuing it at about $20 billion.
But according to the WSJ, public market investors haven’t benefited nearly as much. Slack’s shares have fallen 42%, while the S&P 500 has climbed 9.5%. Meanwhile, shares of Spotify have gained 2.3% since its debut in April 2018, which is below the 24% increase in the S&P 500 over the same period.
One big difference between traditional IPOs and direct listings is what happens when shareholders decide to sue a company. Right now, investors are suing Slack in California federal court, claiming that it did not fully disclose certain risks when it sold securities. Slack responded that the nature of its direct listing provision could, in essence, allow it to sidestep the Securities Act, according to the story:
The company says it shouldn’t be held liable under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933, a provision that underpins many shareholder suits. That is because when Slack went public, investors bought a mix of shares, Slack said in a November court filing. Some were covered by the company’s registration statement filed with the SEC and other shares hadn’t been registered because they were sold by Slack insiders rather the company itself.
Because the investors suing Slack can’t directly trace their shares to the registration statement, the suit should be dismissed, the company argued. Slack also said the plaintiffs can’t seek damages because there was no offering price in its direct listing, which would determine how much money the plaintiffs had lost.
While some have argued that direct listings are a much-needed innovation in the IPO process, it’s important to consider all the risks that come along with it.
Read more here.
UBER AND LYFT FIGHT BACK: Uber and Lyft are refusing to abide by a new California law that compels the companies to classify their drivers as employees.
Assembly Bill 5, or simply AB5, is a law that went into effect in California on Wednesday that could completely change the face of the gig economy in its aims to make it harder for businesses to hire workers as contractors.
Uber and Postmates filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging AB5, alleging that the law is unconstitutional. The companies claim that it’s arbitrary that direct salespeople, travel agents, grant writers, construction truck drivers, commercial fishermen and others are exempted from the law.
“There is no rhyme or reason to these nonsensical exemptions, and some are so ill-defined or entirely undefined that it is impossible to discern what they include or exclude,” according to the complaint.
As venture capitalist Bradley Tusk recently predicted in Term Sheet: Worker classification will be one of the most heated policy fights of 2020.
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Polina Marinova
Twitter: @polina_marinova
Email: polina.marinova@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Loft, a Brazil-based digital real estate platform, raised $175 million in Series C funding. Vulcan Capital and Andreessen Horowitz co-led the round, and was joined by investors including QED Investors, Fifth Wall Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Valor Capital, Monashees.
- Ruangguru, an Indonesia-based online education platform, raised $150 million in Series C funding. General Atlantic and GGV Capital co-led the round.
- Clearcover, a Chicago-based auto insurance provider, raised $50 million in Series C funding. OMERS Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including American Family Ventures, Cox Enterprises and IA Capital Group.
- BlueConic, a Boston-based customer data platform, raised $13 million in Series B funding. - Spring Lake Equity Partners led the round, and was joined by investors including Sigma Prime Ventures.
- TypingDNA, a Brooklyn-based developer of biometric security solutions, raised $7 million in Series A funding. Gradient Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Techstars Ventures and GapMinder Venture Partners.
- TaxBit, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based cryptocurrency tax automation platform, raised $5 million in seed funding. Investors include TTV Capital, Valar Ventures, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Collaborative Fund, Winklevoss Capital, Global Founders Capital, Table Management, and Album VC.
- Repisodic, a Philadelphia-based healthcare technology company, raised $1.75 million in seed funding. American Enterprise Ventures led the round.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
- Gryphon Technologies, a portfolio company of AE Industrial Partners, acquired OMNITEC Solutions, Inc, a Maryland-based business management consultant. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- KKR and Alberta Investment Management Corporation agreed to acquire a 65% equity interest in the Coastal GasLink Pipeline Project, a Canada-based gas pipeline company, from TC Energy Corporation. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- IMG Companies, which is backed by Addison Capital Partners, acquired Altair Technologies Inc, a Fremont, Calif.-based manufacturer specializing in furnace brazing technology. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- One Equity Partners made an investment in Computer Design and Integration, a New York-based provider of IT infrastructure hardware and software, consulting and managed services. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOs
- Lixiang Automotive, a Beijing-based electric vehicle maker, has filed for a $500 million in New York, Reuters reports, citing sources. Read more.
- 1Life Healthcare, a San Francisco-based chain of primary-care clinics known as One Medical, filed to raise $100 million in an IPO. The firm posted revenue of $212.7 million in 2018 and losses of $45.5 million. The Carlyle Group (26.8%), Benchmark (13%), and Oak Investment Partners (11.4%) back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “ONEM.” Read more.
- Black Diamond Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech developing small molecule, tumor-agnostic therapies, filed to raise $100 million in an IPO. The firm has yet to post a revenue and posted losses of $8.9 million in 2018. Versant Ventures (42%), New Enterprise Associates (11.2%), and RA Capital Management (6.7%) back the firm. It plans to list on the Nasdaq as “BDTX.” Read more.
EXITS
- Flywheel Sports, a New York-based operator of indoor cycling boutiques, is close to selling its studios to Town Sports International Holdings Inc, the owner of New York Sports Clubs. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Flywheel has raised more than $120 million in venture funding from investors including L Catterton, Benvolio Group, and Global Endowment Management. Read more.
- Endeavor acquired On Location Experiences, a White Plains, N.Y.-based experiential hospitality business. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Sellers include RedBird Capital Partners, Bruin Sports Capital, the Carlyle Group and 32 Equity.
FIRMS + FUNDS
- Antler, a Singapore-based startup generator and early-stage venture capital firm, raised $50 million for its funds.
PEOPLE
- Edison Partners promoted Kelly Ford to general partner.
- Entrepreneur Partners promoted Lori Lombardo to principal.
- Catalyst Investors promoted Kapil Desai to principal.
- Spectrum Equity promoted John Connolly and Leah Palmer to managing director; Carolina Picazo to chief administrative officer; Cameron Ghorbani to vice president; and Jamie Mitchell and Sam Todd to senior associate.
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fortune--2020-01-06--Apple’s Presence at CES Is Mostly Overblown

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning and Happy New Year. I hope your holidays were restful and as free of technology as possible.
I’ve been culling the ‘what to expect’ lists in preparation for my annual trip to Las Vegas for CES, which begins tonight. The items are generally uninspiring: try-again ideas that didn’t pop last year (5G), big themes you don’t need to travel to America’s most obnoxious city to learn (A.I.), and more TV screens. (This thoughtful piece from Wired gamely reviews the landscape.)
Longtime CES sufferers—sorry, attendees—seem to be quite excited by Apple’s presence at CES, a show it typically shuns in any official capacity, which is how Apple treats any event not its own. Their presence is mostly overblown. Human beings from Apple always are all over CES, mostly attending meetings with partners and customers. Still, it’s notable that Jane Horvath, a top Apple privacy executive, will participate in a roundtable with executives from Facebook and P&G as well as an FTC commissioner. It’s also a bit amusing that Apple’s Airpods, the little runaway hit no one saw coming, has the competition in such a lather.
I’m helping host a dinner focused on transportation, including a fireside chat with John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit. I’ll report back tomorrow.
***
I did a lot of reading and reflecting during the break. For a week I was away from physical newspapers, and while relieved of the burden of keeping up, I still find that even the best news apps are weak replacements for the vastly superior discovery mechanism of the real thing. Some thoughts and highlights:
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek had what I thought would be a hum-drum review of the SoftBank Vision Fund’s problems but was really quite good. Be sure to see the unflattering portrayal of Silicon Valley investor Jeffrey Housenbold, including a naughty comment a SoftBank representative denies he said.
• This New York magazine article about the DJ Diplo was wonderful—and a compete epiphany for this non-EDM fan.
• I read David Talbot’s 2012 book Season of the Witch, an indispensable and fun read about San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s. If you’re trying to figure out this crazy city, I heartily recommend it.
• Erika Fry’s masterful and even-handed feature in Fortune about Sanofi’s debacle with a vaccine for dengue fever in the Philippines is a must read.
***
Lastly, I mourn the passing of David Stern, the former NBA commissioner, who touched me deeply in the few years I knew him. I avidly read about his career and reflected on the cuddly bear of a man I knew only after he retired. (Spoiler alert: He wasn’t always so cuddly.) Stern was one of those youthful septuagenarians, full of life and curiosity for new ideas.
He also was a marvelous raconteur. He once told me the story of how disappointed and fearful his mother was when he decided to leave a cushy New York law firm to join the NBA full-time. (That worked out pretty well.) Stern had a home in Aspen, and for the last few years was a Brainstorm Tech regular. I would often add him to the program at the last minute because he loved to do it, and he always added a ton to any panel he joined. I saw him in July at a pre-conference party and asked if he’d like to join the program again. He clearly wanted to, but was pretty sure and he and his wife had made plans to go bike-riding. He got back to me later that night to say that in fact he’d be pedaling with her rather than gabbing with us. Another good choice.
Adam Lashinsky
Twitter: @adamlashinsky
Email: adam_lashinsky@fortune.com
A NEW FORTUNE: This month, Fortune is launching a new site and app, a new video hub, a new magazine, plus a subscription package. Stay up to date on the developments by entering your email address.
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
A little bit of this town goes a very long way. As Adam noted, CES starts this week, which has drawn the Data Sheet team to Las Vegas. But Samsung decided not to debut a new phone at the show. Instead, they announced that they would announce their next flagship Galaxy phone at their own event on Feb. 11.
How God would do it if he had money. Tim Cook had a slightly less remunerative year in 2019 than in 2018. The Apple CEO got $3 million of salary, a bonus of $7.7 million, and just under $1 million in other compensation, according to a company filing on Friday. The bonus line was down from $12 million the year before, and other top Apple execs also got lower bonuses. Apple said the company didn't do as well beating sales and operating income targets as it did in 2018.
Everything and anything you want to do. Electric carmaker Tesla said it delivered 112,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter, a record number, which helped send its stock price to an all-time high of $443 by Friday's close. Then over the weekend, rival Fisker debuted its entry-level electric car, the $37,500 Ocean sedan. The Ocean will have a range of 300 miles but won't go on sale until next year.
What happens here, stays here. The London Stock Exchange has blamed a computer problem that halted trading in August on a technical misconfiguration, but apparently members of the British intelligence services aren't convinced. They're investigating whether a cyber attack was to blame, the Wall Street Journal reports.
(Sin City headline reference explainer.)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Tech company employees' increasing activism has ignited growing interest in unionization for workers in the sector. But it's no easy task to bring the labor organizing strategies of the past century to an industry that has largely thrived without them, as consultant Christopher Budd explores in a piece for Geekwire. To start, Google has recently fired a total of five employees who claim they were targeted due to their union organizing efforts.
Whether the claims are true or not, the actions have gained attention and headlines, pushing this issue more to people’s minds. Because of that, the perceived heavy-handed response by Google and the response to it seem more likely to foster more pro-union activity at Google in the near future than to quell it. As Google is a huge presence in Silicon Valley and other cities such as Seattle, these actions can have ripple effects throughout the industry. Certainly, it seems more rather than less likely that there will be continued actions like this at Google in 2020. Since Google is such a leader in the industry, that could spread to other companies in Seattle, Silicon Valley, and beyond.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
L’Oréal’s New At-Home Device Makes Personalized Beauty Products, Signaling the Democratization of Cosmetics By John Kell
Apple, Amazon, and Google Want to Create a Smart Home Standard. Here’s What to Expect By Don Reisinger
A Silicon Valley Wellness Retreat for Overworked Techies By JP Mangalindan
Amazon Is on a Collision Course With Employee Activists Outraged by the Climate Crisis By Alyssa Newcomb
Judge’s Approval of T-Mobile-Sprint Merger Is Likely, Analysts Say By Aaron Pressman
5 New Books You Should Read to Ring in 2020 By Rachel King
BEFORE YOU GO
Over the next few days, we'll surely bring all the highlights, and lowlights, of what we see at CES. But there's already a strong contender for weirdest possible consumer gadget unveiled in 2020. Don't click on that link if your mouth is full right now. It's a true LOL.
Aaron Pressman
On Twitter: @ampressman
Email: aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-01-07--Visa and Mastercard Say No to Delaying Deadline for Gas Pump Chip Card Upgrades

The FDA Kept Up Its Drug Approval Streak In 2019

Gas stations around the U.S. are rushing to upgrade fuel pumps to accept credit and debit cards with chips after Visa and Mastercard rejected a request to delay a looming deadline to complete the work.
Beginning in October, station operators that haven’t modernized their pumps will face liability for any card fraud that happens at their businesses. The industry is “massively under-prepared,” said Joshua Smith, chief executive officer of Gas Pos, which sells point-of-sale systems.
“There’s not enough technicians to do the installments,” Smith said. “There’s not enough inventory. Even if there were enough contractors, there’s not enough dispensers available.”
Most retailers began to upgrade payment systems in 2015—the first of a series of deadlines set by Visa and Mastercard as the U.S. worked to catch up with nations in Europe and Asia that had long adopted the more-secure chip cards. For fuel retailers, the deadline was ultimately pushed back five years as the industry faced costs of more than $3.9 billion to do the work.
In a 2019 survey by Conexxus, a non-profit that represents convenience stores, almost 70% of respondents who own a convenience store said they haven’t upgraded any outside pumps to the new so-called EMV technology.
Few companies manufacture the required pumps. Those that do—such as Dover Corp. or Fortive Corp.’s Gilbarco Veeder-Root—have said they’re expecting an increase in sales ahead of the deadline. Once the hardware is installed, fuel companies must have the pump software certified.
Fuel retailers that don’t upgrade could face costs of as much as $201,000 per store over the next seven years, according to data compiled by Conexxus. The group expects the fuel industry to suffer $451 million of card fraud in 2020 alone.
“There’s going to be quite a surprise come October,” Laura Townsend, senior vice president of the Merchant Advisory Group, said in an interview. “Folks that have been trying to transition to EMV will be unable to because of things outside their control. But they will bear a significant increase in losses either come October or shortly thereafter because we know fraudsters will find the weakest link.”
In the Conexxus survey, more than half of participants cited a lack of available software for not having chip technology fully deployed, while about 15% pointed to a shortage of hardware. The convenience-store industry blames Visa and Mastercard for not consulting them when setting deadlines.
“The payment standard-setting process needs to be more open,” said Anna Ready Blom, director of government relations for NACS, a trade association for the convenience-store industry. “Retailers and technology companies should have been part of the planning and decision-making on chip cards from the start. If they had been, rather than Visa and Mastercard making all the decisions without understanding them fully, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Visa has previously highlighted its discussions with merchants when it announced its decision to extend the deadline for gas station operators in 2016.
Visa and Mastercard aren’t willing to give gas stations more time. The networks recently rejected a plea for a delay from the Merchant Advisory Group, which helps retailers navigate payment-systems issues.
“We believe extending chip technology to fuel pumps is an important step to take to protect businesses and consumers who want to pay securely as well as conveniently,” Visa said in a statement. Mastercard said it’s seeing good adoption of EMV technology and a reduction in fraud.
Visa and Mastercard began calling for a migration to chips years ago to head off counterfeit-card fraud. The underlying technology—called EMV for founders Europay, Mastercard, and Visa—generates new codes for each transaction, while the information on magnetic stripes is permanent and can be copied and stored by hackers.
More than 3.7 million merchants—or 80% of U.S. storefronts—currently accept chip cards. Since 2015, the amount of money merchants lost to counterfeit fraud has declined by 62%, according to Visa.
As gas stations start to make the switch, they’re also facing an increased threat from hackers looking to take advantage of one of the last industries that remains vulnerable to counterfeit-card fraud.
“As long as the magnetic stripe readers are in place, fuel dispenser merchants are becoming an increasingly attractive target for advanced threat actors,” Visa said in a security alert issued in November. It recommended these merchants deploy chip acceptance along with other security measures such as encryption and educating employees about phishing attacks.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—L’Oréal’s new at-home device makes personalized beauty products
—UPS’s $20 billion bet on e-commerce is paying off
—How the 2010s changed retail forever—Consumers are turning away from real fur, but faux fur is not a perfect fix
—After a decade of e-commerce, convenience just isn’t enough
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-01-07--The Case for Designing Beautiful Airports: It’s About the Experience

Visa and Mastercard Say No to Delaying Deadline for Gas Pump Chip Card Upgrades

This is the web version of Business x Design, a newsletter on the power of design. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
New Year’s greetings from Hong Kong. I’ve been thinking lately about the design of airports, perhaps because I’ve been through so many of them in the last couple of months. It’s also because each time I return from Asia to the United States, the gap in customer experience seems to widen.
Over the holidays I shuttled—kids in tow—from Hong Kong through airports in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, before returning to Hong Kong. The contrast on opposite sides of the Pacific was jarring.
In Hong Kong, even amidst citywide protests that have prompted an unprecedented security crackdown, departure was fast and painless. We zipped through check-in, security, and immigration in about 20 minutes—leaving ample time to savor dim sum in the ultra-posh Cathay Pacific lounge.
In Los Angeles, despite a three-hour layover, we barely made our connection. Immigration took forever. We waited endlessly for luggage, then queued for an eternity in customs, only to be randomly singled out for inspection and sent to another line. Navigating from the international terminal to the gate for our domestic connection was an ordeal worthy of Beckett. Security staff behaved like prison guards. Food? Forget about it.
My kids, who have grown up in Asia but take pride in their U.S. citizenship, were appalled.
In fairness, airports in the U.S. are a lot older—the average age is about 40 years—than those in Asia. And the three U.S. airports we visited on our last trip are among the 50 American hubs currently under renovation. (Others include the airport everyone loves to hate, New York’s LaGuardia, which is getting an $8 billion overhaul.)
All told, U.S. airports are spending an estimated $70 billion to get their collective acts together. Will this flurry of construction bring customer experience at U.S. airports equal to that of the best airports in Asia?
I doubt it.
That’s partly because most American airports are owned by state or local governments and funded through a combination of federal grants, local user fees, and tenant rents. The emphasis is on security and how to get passengers to spend as much as possible between curb and jetway. In contrast, Asia’s best airports benefit from direct support from national governments who view aviation infrastructure with a broader perspective, as a critical component of economic development strategy.
Planners for Asia’s leading airports take customer experience seriously. Singapore Changi Airport, ranked by Skytrax as the world’s best airport for seven years in a row, is clean, efficient, well laid-out, with abundant shopping and dining options. Queuing for taxis is a hassle, but the tree-lined drive from airport to downtown is spectacularly beautiful.
Changi welcomed more than 65 million passengers in 2018, making it the world’s 7th busiest airport All told, Singapore’s aviation sector generates 6 percent of the city-state’s GDP and accounts for about 160,000 jobs.
Singapore continues to double down on its commitment to Changi. Last June, the city opened Jewel, a sprawling, $1.3 billion air terminal described by its Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie as a “mystical paradise garden.”
Delegates to last year’s Brainstorm Design 2019 got a sneak preview of Jewel. You have to see it to believe it. The facility includes an indoor tropical forest with more than 2,000 trees, a “canopy park” that allows visitors to walk on a rope mesh over its 10-story atrium, round-the-clock cinemas, and nearly 300 high-end shops and restaurants. The centerpiece is the world’s largest indoor waterfall. (Check out the astonished reviews of Jewel here, here, here, and here.)
And yet Jewel is more than just an airport with a fancy shopping mall. Changi’s planners have thought through every detail, and thoroughly embraced the concept of design thinking. At Brainstorm Design 2018, Changi Airport Group CEO Lee Seow Hiang told Fortune CEO Alan Murray that his model for Jewel was Apple: He wanted to make customers love his airport as much as they love their iPhones.
Speaking of Singapore, there’s still time to register for Brainstorm Design 2020. This year’s program, organized under the theme of “Designing our Destiny,” features an all-star roster of design luminaries. Among them:
Waymo design head YooJung Ahn
Design ethicist Cennydd Bowles
Walmart design head Valerie Casey
Oracle president of user experience design Hillel Cooperman
From IBM, distinguished designers Adam Cutler and Joni Saylor , as well as design director for AI transformation Jennifer Sukis
and , as well as design director for AI transformation Twitter design and research vice president Dantley Davis
Salesforce chief ethical and humane use officer Paula Goldman
Author and former Fast Company design editor Cliff Kuang
Ikea design manager Eva Lilja Löwenhielm
Design and tech guru John Maeda
PepsiCo chief Design officer Mauro Porcini
Architect Ole Scheeren
Stanford d.school executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg
This year promises to be our best Brainstorm Design ever. The dates are March 25 and 26. Sign up here, and see more design news below.
Clay Chandler
@ClayChandler
Clay.Chandler@Fortune.com
VISION, EMPATHY, SCALE
This edition of Business x Design was curated by Margaret Rhodes.
CES 2020. The Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing. Tech reporters have descended upon Las Vegas and begun the annual effort of sifting through a sea of consumer goods to find the most surprising, innovative products. So far, there’s plenty of the expected: Connected toothbrushes, novelty robots, and many, many TVs. But there’s also a sensor-laden bike helmet that sends safe turn signals, a litter box with cat facial recognition (so you can discern which cat may need a new diet), and a smart pillow that inflates to better support those with sleep apnea—products that don’t need a kitchen sink’s worth of tech features in order to be meaningful. [WIRED]
Courtesy of Sweetgreen
High-tech greens. Last fall, Sweetgreen debuted Sweetgreen 3.0, a new store format that replaces physical lines with touchscreen kiosks and a mobile app for ordering. This year, the fast-casual salad chain wants to perfect the new model and use its strategy to scale from restaurants up to what one co-founder calls a “food-platform.” If it works, this new experience would propel Sweetgreen (already valued at $1.6 billion) into a self-contained ecosystem of consumer data, product creation, and delivery—not unlike tech behemoths such as Amazon or Netflix. [The New York Times]
Going electric. Tesla had a big 2019: In addition to unveiling two new concepts—the Model Y SUV and the Cybertruck—the electric vehicle manufacturer sold a record 367,500 cars. Buoyed by the popularity of the mass-market Model 3, those sales eclipse the past two years combined. Typically embattled (and, to be fair, often creating its own battles), Tesla is in a bright spot: From the beginning, the company’s stated goal has been to evolve from selling limited numbers of luxury vehicles to making sustainable transportation affordable and available to many. The strategy seems to be working. [The Verge]
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Apple, Amazon, and Google Want to Create a Smart Home Standard. Here’s What to Expect by Don Reisinger
Google’s Waymo Reaches 20 Million Miles of Autonomous Driving by Aaron Pressman
Just How Safe Are Direct Listings, Really? by Polina Marinova
The Most Anticipated Books of 2020, According to Goodreads by Rachel King
MGM Resorts CEO: What Happens in Vegas No Longer Stays in Vegas by Jim Murren
DISCUSSION
“We are addicted to accumulation,” writes journalist Kyle Chayka in The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, an upcoming book tracing the advent of minimalism. Accumulation comes in many forms: fast-fashion clothing, tchotchkes bought on Amazon, wealth—and debt, which hit home for many around the time of the 2008 financial collapse. That’s when minimalism started to take hold. As an aesthetic and economic principle, minimalism disavows all that accrued junk. It preaches the joy of not needing things, whatever those things may be.
Chayka surveys the evolution of minimalism, from decorating trend to lifestyle gospel. He also follows its ironic, or perhaps inevitable, turn towards commodification, in the form of books, conferences, and Marie Kondo’s special storage boxes. In an excerpt in The Guardian, Chayka writes:
“The minimalist attitude speaks to the feeling that all aspects of life have become relentlessly commodified. Buying unnecessary items on Amazon with credit cards is a fast and easy way to exert some feeling of control over our precarious surroundings. Brands sell us cars, televisions, smartphones and other products (often on loans that inflate their costs) as if they will solve our problems. Through books, podcasts and designed objects, the idea of minimalism itself has also been commodified.”
Chayka’s book grapples with the idea of excess. When Fast Company writer Mark Wilson surveyed designers about ambitions for the new decade, he found that they, too, are concerned about excessive consumption. There will be a reckoning over what it means to be a consumer, as suggested by Chayka’s point that people can’t even quit buying things without that habit becoming one more thing to package and sell. It could be that the term no longer belongs in an ethical business landscape, as Fjord co-founder Mark Curtis notes in the Fast Company article:
“Over the next few years the idea of ‘consumer’ will come to feel really backward as a label—like the idea of ‘servant’ is pretty awkward in the 21st century. As causes grow as a motivation for purchase, we will see companies try to grow a direct link between the purpose of their employees and that of their customers, and to grow that as a direct connection.”
In Curtis’s view, a change in consumption patterns might not mean abstinence. It could be about purchasing intent. Either way, attitudes are shifting, and consumers, users, people—whatever you call them—will constantly renegotiate their relationship with the objects and companies that fill their lives.


fortune--2020-01-07--PwC Global Chairman: Why CEOs are Pessimistic About 2020 Business Outlook

It’s a new year, and it’s back to business. So how do American CEOs feel about the economic and business outlook for 2020?
“In general, I would say they’re more pessimistic,” says Robert Moritz, global chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Moritz is in a position to know. PwC is one of the world’s leading professional service companies, operating in more than 150 countries, providing services to almost all of the firms on the Fortune 500. Moritz talks regularly with corporate America’s chieftains, and he says their pessimism is based on a multitude of factors, not just one.
“You’ve got uncertainty coming out of China in terms of a slowing economy, plus the trade wars. You’ve got a Brexit issue in terms of what’s the role of the UK going forward and the EU for that matter,” he explains. “You’ve got a political issue here in the U.S. in terms of what may happen come next November when we get through an election cycle.”
All those unknowns, he says, has knocked CEO confidence. “That uncertainty causes them to slow and pause and not be so confident in the decisions they’re making.”
The one bright spot, he notes, is American consumer confidence.
“The one thing you can say when people look at the U.S. for opportunity, the resiliency of the country, the consumer confidence, and the consumer experience, as well as the willingness to actually see innovation come to life,” Moritz says. “That’s a positive for CEOs in the U.S. It’s a positive for CEOs around the world to continue to want to invest in the U.S.”
Watch the video above for more.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—25 ideas that will shape the 2020s
—USPS could privatize as early as next year
—UPS’s $20 billion bet on e-commerce is paying off
—Airbnb copes with a bad trip on the road to a 2020 IPO
—2020 Crystal Ball: Predictions for the economy, politics, technology, etc.
Subscribe to Fortune’s Eye on A.I. newsletter, where artificial intelligence meets industry.


fortune--2020-01-07--Facebook Deepfake Video Ban May Set Off ‘Cat and Mouse’ Game

Facebook plans to ban some deepfake videos, as it seeks to show regulators that it’s cracking down on misleading content ahead of this year’s presidential election.
Deepfake videos are an emerging phenomenon that are created using artificial intelligence. In some cases, the technology can alter a video to make it seems like someone says something they didn’t—potentially starting a war or influencing the outcome of an election.
“While these videos are still rare on the internet, they present a significant challenge for our industry and society as their use increases,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s global vice president of policy management writes in a blog post.
Enforcing a ban
Facebook has been grappling with how to handle deepfakes since last year, after two high-profile examples went viral on its social network. One video showing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was slightly altered to make it seem as though she was drunk. Despite complaints, Facebook decided against removing the video, which, technically, wasn’t a deepfake because it was created without A.I.
“PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE” pic.twitter.com/1OyCyqRTuk — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2019
Then in June, a pair of artists tried to test Facebook’s policy of allowing deepfakes by posting on Facebook an altered video showing Zuckerberg bragging about a plan to rule the world. The company didn’t remove the video since it didn’t violate its community guidelines. However, because the words coming out of Zuckerberg’s mouth were out of context and digitally altered, Facebook limited the video’s distribution in its news feed.
Zuckerberg has long struggled with how Facebook should handle free speech, including misinformation. More often than not, the company has opted to do nothing, instead arguing that it shouldn’t be an arbiter of free speech.
But Facebook’s new deepfakes ban, announced Monday night, is somewhat of a departure. It calls for removing videos that “would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not say,” and videos that are the result of A.I. merging, superimposing, or replacing imagery in a video, according to Bickert.
The ban was first reported by The Washington Post.
The new policy puts a modest limit on a recent and controversial Facebook rule that allows politicians to lie in ads. Now, they will still be able to lie, but they won’t be able to post deepfakes as part of those ads.
“We do not allow content that violates our community standards in ads (of which this manipulated media policy is a part), whether posted by a politician or anyone else,” a Facebook spokesperson tells Fortune.
Some videos are so amateurish that they seem more like “cheap fakes,” such as the one that featured Zuckerberg. But rapid advancements in technology make this a “cat and mouse game” when it comes to detection.
Nico Fischbach, global chief technology officer at Forcepoint, a cybersecurity company, described Facebook’s new policy as “an important move” at a time when deepfakes are “taking on a life of their own” and spreading across social networks.
“In general, people link it to the U.S. election, but at the end of the day this [deepfakes] is going to be used a lot for social engineering,” says Fischbach. “It’s not a U.S. problem. It’s a global problem.”
For that, Facebook has been working with outside academics, researchers, and organizations to get better and faster at detecting deepfakes. Last year, Facebook launched Deep Fake Detection Challenge aimed at creating open source tools that anyone can use to help sniff out manipulated media. The challenge is set to end in March and includes $10 million in grant funding.
Some deepfakes are allowed
The ban doesn’t cover every video that has been manipulated. The new policy allows videos that are parody, satire or have been edited to change the order of words. The Pelosi video, for instance, might still not meet the threshold for removal under the new guidelines. However, it’s unclear what standards would be used to determine whether a video was intended to be satire.
Bickert says some videos that don’t meet the standard for removal will still be reviewed by independent third-party fact-checkers. Those videos will be flagged as false to anyone who tries to share them.
“If we simply removed all manipulated videos flagged by fact-checkers as false, the videos would still be available elsewhere on the internet or social media ecosystem,” Bickert says. “By leaving them up and labelling them as false, we’re providing people with important information and context.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—7 companies founded in the last 10 years that you now can’t live without
—Electronic health records are creating a ‘new era’ of health care fraud
—Apple, Amazon, and Google want to create a smart home standard
—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
—Amazon is on a collision course with employee activists outraged by the climate crisis
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-07--Trump Retreats From Threat to Attack Iranian Cultural Sites

President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed away from his threats to target Iranian cultural sites if Iran retaliates against the U.S. for killing one of its top generals.
Targeting cultural sites is a war crime.
After first tweeting the threat and later reiterating it to reporters as he flew back to Washington over the weekend, Trump retreated Tuesday, saying, “I like to obey the law.”
But he still sounded offended by the idea that such sites would be off limits during armed conflict.
“Think of it,” Trump said during an Oval Office appearance. “They kill our people. They blow up our people. And then we have to be very gentle with their cultural institutions?”
Trump added: “But I’m OK with it. It’s OK with me.” He then issued yet another stern warning to Iran to stand down, saying, “If Iran does anything they shouldn’t be doing, they are going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.”
On Monday, Defense Secretary Mike Esper had distanced the Pentagon from Trump’s threats to bomb Iranian cultural sites despite international prohibitions on such activity.
Esper said the U.S. will “follow the laws of armed conflict.” Asked if that ruled out targeting cultural sites, Esper pointedly added, “That’s the laws of armed conflict.”
It all began over the weekend when Trump tweeted Saturday that if Iran attacked any American assets to avenge the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the U.S. had 52 targets across the Islamic Republic that “WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”
He added that some are “important to Iran & Iranian culture.”
Anger spread quickly across Iran, and Trump repeated the threat to reporters traveling with him as he flew back to Washington on Sunday after spending two weeks at his Florida resort.
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated sharply after Trump ordered a drone strike in Iraq that killed Soleimani, head of Iran’s powerful Quds Force. The U.S. has said Soleimani was killed because he was making plans to attack American diplomats and service members in the Middle East.
Targeting cultural sites is a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention for their protection. Separately, in 2017, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the destruction of heritage sites. Attacks by the Islamic State group and other armed factions in Syria and Iraq prompted that vote.
UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, has called on governments to remember that cultural sites are not targets.
Trump’s tweet also caused concern in Washington. One U.S. national security official said the threat against Iranian cultural sites had caught many in his administration off-guard and prompted calls for others in his government, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to clarify the matter. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly to the issue, called such a clarification necessary to affirm that the U.S. military would not intentionally commit war crimes.
When asked about the president’s tweet, Pompeo said Sunday that the U.S. will “behave” within the law. Questioned about the matter again Tuesday, Pompeo said every action taken by the U.S. “will be consistent with the international rule of law,” though he did not specifically rule out Iranian cultural sites.
He then blamed Iran for damaging its culture.
Iran is home to two dozen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Persepolis, with its ancient ruins that date to 518 B.C.; the 17th century grand mosque of Isfahan, located in a teeming bazaar; and the Golestan Palace in the heart of Tehran, where the last shah to rule Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was crowned in 1967.
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—Donald Trump and the power of incumbency
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—USPS could privatize as early as next year
—2020 Crystal Ball: Predictions for the economy, politics, technology, and more
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.


fortune--2020-01-07--CES Cannabis Conundrum: Makers of Award-Winning Product Can’t Mention Its Purpose

For the second year in a row, organizers of tech trade show CES have found themselves in an awkward position after handing out a prestigious award.
Keep Labs won an Innovation award this year for its flagship product, a high-tech stash box that lets people discretely store their cannabis and monitor their inventory via their smart phone. However, the CTA, the group that organizes CES, informed the company that it was banned from referencing marijuana in any of its signs or marketing material, nor could any cannabis be shown in the storage device (though weed is legal in Las Vegas, where CES is held).
It’s a case of semi-déjà vu for the show. Last year, adult sex toy company Lora DiCarlo was given an Innovation award for its Ose, but that reward was later rescinded after show organizers realized the product’s purpose. After a deluge of complaints, organizers returned the award to the company months after CES ended.
Show organizers this year say the situations are vastly different.
“Marijuana is illegal at the federal level—as well as in public parks and hotels in the state of Nevada,” the CTA said in a statement. “Because of this, CES does not cover cannabis. Keep Labs was able to exhibit under the terms they’d showcase their product as a home appliance or storage device—the category they submitted their innovation award for.”
Keep Labs hasn’t had to relinquish its award, but because of the restrictions, it chose not to display its product at CES this year.
“We are honored to be the first cannabis-adjacent product or company to ever be awarded as a CES Innovation Honoree,” said Philip Wilkins, CEO of Keep Labs. “We obviously planned to exhibit in Las Vegas this year, … [but] watering down our product in order to showcase would not only be going against our brand, but would have done the entire cannabis industry a disservice at a pivotal moment in time when the stigma associated with cannabis needs to evolve. We are not a general home storage device. We are intentionally designed to store cannabis products responsibly.”
Keep Labs takes a high-tech approach to cannabis storage. Using biometric security (the device uses facial recognition), it alerts owners when anyone accesses or moves the unit. And it’s a discretely shaped and designed device that could easily be confused for a digital assistant. The product’s maker is currently in the middle of a fundraising campaign, which came with its own hurdles after online fundraising services Kickstarter and IndieGoGo refused to allow the company to use their platforms (again, because of the word cannabis).
Officially, of course, CES has no category for cannabis products. Then again, it didn’t have one for sex toys last year, and Lora DiCarlo still won. The complaints the followed the company’s reversal was one of the chief reasons organizers created an adult novelty/sexual health section on the CES show floor this year.
And cannabis-themed companies have certainly been at CES before, albeit in a roundabout way. For the past two years, Pax Labs has shown off its vaporizers at an unofficial, but heavily attended event in Las Vegas that coincides with CES. And both years, it has handed out cards to attendees, inviting them to try the product as it was intended to be used at a local dispensary the following day.
Cannabis-focused companies have sharply criticized CES for continuing to ban them from the official show floor. Last year, over 175,000 people attend CES along with nearly 6,400 members of the media, which can result in tremendous exposure for a company, especially a startup that wins a prestigious award.
“They are perpetuating outdated stigmas,” said Cortney Smith, founder and CEO of DaVinci, another vaporizer company focused on cannabis. “And as a result, visionary companies that advance useful consumer technology are pushed away because they don’t fit a specific narrative. … CES gives new innovators a platform and legitimizes revolutionary industries, and it’s a missed opportunity when they exclude those innovators over an obsolete fear.”
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—Amazon is on a collision course with employee activists outraged by the climate crisis
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fortune--2020-01-07--Comparing the Stock Market in 2018 vs. 2019 Gives Us Clues About What to Expect in 2020

The stock market just finished a rollicking 2019. The S&P was up nearly 32% including dividends. These types of gains present something of a double-edged sword for the investor psyche though.
On the one hand, huge gains are always a pleasant surprise and better than the alternative. On the other hand, investors become nervous following big gains because the assumption is a crash will be soon to follow.
The truth is there is little signal in the noise of year-to-year stock market returns. What happened last year has no bearing on what happens this year. Historically, the percentage of gains in the stock market following a variety of scenarios is fairly similar:
Since 1926, the S&P 500 has been up roughly three out of every four years. But we can also break these numbers down by the percentage of time stocks are up in a calendar year following an up year, down year, double-digit gain or double-digit loss. On average, the percentage of time stocks are up the following year is relatively similar.
On average, stocks go up most of the time. Of course, within those average returns is a wide range of outcomes, both to the upside and the downside. Investors can get a better sense of this range of outcomes by comparing what happened in the S&P 500 in 2018 and 2019.
2018 was the first down year of the decade in the 2010s for the S&P 500, falling more than 4%.
2019 was the eighteenth calendar year since 1928 which saw the S&P 500 rise 30% or more. This means gains of 30% or more have happened in roughly one out of every five calendar years.
In 2018 there were 18 new all-time highs in the S&P 500.
In 2019 there were 35 new all-time highs in the S&P 500.
In 2018 the maximum peak-to-trough drawdown in the S&P 500 was 19.8%.
In 2019 the maximum peak-to-trough drawdown in the S&P 500 was just 6.8%.
In 2018 the S&P 500 experienced four down months and all of them were relatively large declines (-3.6%, -2.8%, -6.8% and -9.0%).
In 2019 the S&P 500 experienced just two down months over the course of the year, falling 6.3% and 1.6%, respectively in May and August.
In 2018 there were 32 trading days in which the S&P 500 was down 1% or worse. Fifteen of those days saw losses extend to 2% or worse. On the flipside, the S&P was up at least 1% or more 35 days while 5 of those trading sessions saw gains of 2% or more.
In 2019 there were just 15 trading days where the S&P 500 fell 1% or worse, of which 5 of those were 2% or worse. There were 23 up 1% days in 2019 and just two 2% or better daily gains.
It’s counterintuitive but the best years in the stock market don’t typically feature huge gains day in and day out. In fact, large gains and large losses tend to cluster during volatile, down markets like we saw in 2018. The best years tend to have little volatility and many small gains.
In 2018 the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate Bond Index outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 4.5%.
In 2019 the S&P 500 outperformed the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate Bond Index by more than 22%.
Looking at the averages in the stock market can help provide investors a much-needed long-term perspective. But it’s important to remember that last year’s results in the stock market have no bearing on what will happen this year.
Ben Carlson, CFA is the Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He may own securities or assets discussed in this piece.
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—That great 2019 S&P rally? It has big warning signs for 2020
—The relationship between geopolitical crises and market outcomes isn’t simple
—Why you actually may want to buy “bears” in a bull market
—5 CEO exits that sum up the memorable business year that was 2019
—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
Don’t miss the Term Sheet, Fortune’s newsletter on deals and dealmakers.


fortune--2020-01-07--Chip Wars 2020: What AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm Announced at CES

Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Advanced Micro Devices debuted some of their latest chips at the 2020 CES tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. In general, they’re faster and more power-efficient versions of existing technology, which should enable laptop makers to create even smaller devices that last longer on a charge. Some of the new chips, which have been in development for years, are already being used in devices coming out in the next few months, while others face a longer lead time.
Here’s what chip makers announced at CES:
Advanced Micro Devices
AMD CEO Lisa Su on Monday introduced new chips for laptops and desktop computers—and unlike some rivals, revealed their prices and when they would be available.
The biggest headlines went to AMD’s latest Ryzen Threadripper processing chip that are intended for desktop PCs for content creators, financial analysts, and other high-end customers. Containing 64 separate computing cores on one chip, the most ever in a consumer chip and double the number in last year’s Threadripper, the new chip will arrive on Feb. 7 at a price of almost $4,000 each. The many cores will make quick work of intensive tasks like encoding videos or crunching big data sets.
For laptops, AMD introduced the Ryzen 4000 Mobile line that can run at speeds up to 4.2 GHz. The company said the chips outperform comparable “Ice Lake” chips from Intel by as much as 90% on tasks like video rendering that use all of the computing cores in a chip. Those claims have yet to be tested by outside reviewers, however.
The press conference allowed Su to take a bit of victory lap for steering AMD through a rough patch to its current strong position, including a 150% stock price gain last year. She also talked about some of AMD’s chips outperforming those from rivals Intel and Nvidia.
Intel
Intel, the leading chipmaker for PCs and servers, had a tough 2019 after conceding that some new products would be delayed. It also suffered from supply shortages of some chips, which hurt sales during the busy holiday period.
So CEO Bob Swan, who took over from Brian Krzanich last year, didn’t have many specific new Intel products to showcase at CES. Instead, the company spent much of its stage time highlighting new devices from partners.
They included the high-end Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, one of the thinnest and most powerful such devices ever made. Another was a folding laptop from Lenovo called the ThinkPad X1 Fold, which can turn into a tablet-like device with a 13-inch screen or fold close to about half that size.
Intel also showed off its own prototype folding laptop, called Horseshoe Bend, which opened into a massive 17-inch screen. Intel isn’t going into the laptop business—rather, the device is intended to encourage innovation by PC makers.
In terms of chips, Intel made some claims about its upcoming Tiger Lake processing chips, which are for thin and light laptops. The chips will offer a “double digit” percentage point increase in performance over Intel’s current chips and contain support for Thunderbolt 4, a new, faster standard for connecting hard drives and other peripherals to computers. But the company didn’t provide many more details and said the chips would reach market at some unspecified time later this year.
Intel also showed off a laptop running its new separate graphics card chip, dubbed the DG1, playing the video game Destiny 2. But Intel didn’t say when the DG1 would hit the market or how much it would cost.
Qualcomm
The leading maker of chips for mobile phones used its time at CES mostly to talk about its efforts to sell more chips in cars, particularly for self-driving vehicles.
Qualcomm introduced a set of chips for handling autonomous driving duties called the Snapdragon Driving Platform. The company also announced a service called Car-to-Cloud that will make it easier for automakers to send software updates to vehicles wirelessly.
Qualcomm, which is already a leading provider of chips to power infotainment systems in cars, said it expected its auto segment revenues to grow from $600 million last year to $1.5 billion by 2024. Qualcomm currently has annual revenue of around $20 billion.
Nvidia
Still reaping the benefits of the Turing graphic chip design it introduced in consumer graphics cards at last year’s CES, Nvidia focused its 2020 announcements on other areas.
One new offering is a large monitor aimed at video gamers who use desktop PCs. Made in conjunction with computer maker ASUS and called the ROG 360, the 24-inch monitor uses Nvidia’s G-Sync technology to refresh its screen at a rate of 360 Hz, or about six times more frequently than a standard monitor.
Nvidia also debuted a robot made by Toyota that runs on Nvidia’s chips. Called the T-HR3, the human-looking robot can be controlled by a human operator who is wearing virtual reality goggles and has linked controllers on their arms and legs.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—7 companies founded in the last 10 years that you now can’t live without
—Electronic health records are creating a ‘new era’ of health care fraud
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—What a $1,000 investment in 10 top stocks a decade ago would be worth today
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Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.


fortune--2020-01-07--Some Students Are More Magic Than Others

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.
Kelly Wickham Hurst is the founder and executive director of Being Black at School, a data-driven policy and advocacy group that also works with teachers and administrators to develop more inclusive curriculums and classrooms. She had previously worked in public schools in a variety of teaching and administrative capacities for 23 years.
Hurst recently wrote a popular Twitter thread on some of the common hurdles white teachers face when talking about race and equity. Today, raceAhead has adapted that thread into a Gif essay, with Hurst’s permission.
“I get a lot of the same questions,” she tells raceAhead. At the heart of the matter, she finds, is an issue that all inclusion professionals must grapple with: Majority-culture people either forget or don’t know that the world is designed for them. “When thinking of systems in the United States that have persisted, it seems that many people fail to recall that they were all built for white people and that all other people of color groups have fought, even up to the Supreme Court level, for ways to be included,” she says.
This is a different way of thinking about equity work. “At what point are we going to be accountable to people of color in ways that systems are solely accountable to whiteness?”
Read on for Hurst’s thoughts, in Gif essay form.
***
Some Students Are More Magic Than Others
Much of the content I use is standard in each school, and I often ask the same questions to get my finger on the pulse of an American school. It’s pretty much the same: Talking about racism is hard. We don’t do a very good job of it. In fact, schools have avoided it.
*
One thing I have to mention to teachers: We all got into a system that was originally created for white children AND we all read theorists and the pedagogy of white men who studied white children. These are facts. So, if you got to read any theorist in undergrad who wasn’t white…
*
Then, I move into developmentally appropriate behaviors of middle schoolers. Quick sidebar: Middle school kids are my JAM. They process aloud, have no filter, and they’re figuring things out. In front of us. They say the funniest things.
*
They also tell us heartbreaking things. They’re tender AND brutal. They’re learning AND a bunch of know-it-alls. When we explore a little bit of our knowledge around what we know to be true of this age, we agree those kids are MAGIC.
*
And yet… Schools and the adults in them rarely allow this magic for any child who isn’t white. They label, disenfranchise, and negate the development of our students of color. They prescribe a remedy and look to “manage” that behavior. The same behaviors white kids GET to have!
*
What’s been really getting to me is the incredulity of these facts. The ways I have to work SO HARD to get teachers who should already know developmental stages of the kids they serve. I see light bulbs go off when I say it as if they forgot that students of color are also… kids.
*
I’m not sure what to do with this. It’s just a constant response. People talk to me during breaks or after a workshop. Some have thanked me for reminding them.
Which means, perhaps, that we need to make this a part of DAILY LIFE in education.
*
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to me but it does. When I ask—“What do you recall about adolescent development from your learning?”—it is as if no one has asked them or reminded them of it in years.
When I ask what theorists of color they’ve read…
*
This isn’t to shame them. I’m reporting on a continuous phenomenon I witness everywhere.
And that is so depressing to me. That what I’m asking is such an anomaly. That collectively we don’t talk about pedagogy and application more often.
— Kelly Wickham Hurst
***
Ellen here, again. In addition to making inclusive leadership development “part of DAILY LIFE,” says Hurst, one answer is to find ways to give people the information they need in a way they can take it in, early and often. “Create space for your teachers [or in this case, leaders],” she says.
In her most recent training, “I spoke for an hour and then they had the next hour to learn on their own.” Over 100 people were scattered all over the building watching videos, listening to podcasts, or reading. “It was information they were ready for, and they were able to process it in multiple ways. It leveled the way to enter the antiracism work.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On Point
Puerto Rico hit by 6.4 earthquake early Tuesday morning The quake killed one man, injured at least eight other people, and destroyed buildings in the southern part of the island, according to the AP. Power outages are widespread. Worse, aftershocks are continuing, and seismologists don’t know if the shakes will stop or get worse. The event has retraumatized communities still reeling from hurricanes past, and destroyed a beloved ancient rock formation called Punta Ventana on the southern coast.
AP
It’s Zora Neale Hurston’s birthday and we all get a gift The editors of Zora, the Medium magazine for women of color named for the famed writer, have compiled the Zora Canon, their list of the 100 greatest literary works ever written by African-American women. It was clearly a labor of love and a long overdue corrective. “This list is an exciting one: an accounting by Black women writers for Black women readers of the voices to listen to and value; of the voices that show us ourselves, interrogate ourselves, and, most importantly, value our consciousnesses,” says Kaitlyn Greenidge, author and New York Times contributing opinion writer. Share with joy.
Zora
Female mayors are more likely to experience verbal and physical harassment than their male counterparts A recent study finds that 79% of mayors in the U.S. report being the victims of harassment, psychological or verbal abuse, and 13% report physical threats. The study, published in the academic journal State and Local Government Review, found that gender was the trigger for most of the abuse: “Female mayors were more than twice as likely as their male counterparts to experience psychological abuse and almost three times as likely to experience physical violence.” Younger mayors were less likely to be spared, too.
New York Times
Big Law takes on diversity in blockchain A new report, backed by several Big Law firm partners and other executives compiled recent data showing that people of color and women are underrepresented in the blockchain industry, among blockchain conference speakers, and in blockchain-related academic fields. It’s still early, they say. “Radical action can be taken to embed and support diversity and inclusion practices and culture at the outset of the industry so that rules are not overlaid with implicit cultural biases that exclude.” The report was published by the nonprofit group Diversity in Blockchain, and sponsored by the law firms Linklaters and Crowell & Moring.
Big Law Business
On Background
Time to retire these diversity practices Janice Gassam, the founder of a diversity consultancy, has put together a pretty spot-on list of outdated ideas that need to be left behind in the last decade. They point to some common pet peeves I hear often. Boilerplate and mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings be gone, she says. Not assessing your DEI efforts, stop that. But also, she says, go deep. Acknowledge that what happens in the world affects your employees. “Some companies may feel like it’s better to stay out of politics, however, politics are inextricably linked to how we live our lives and our experiences in and out of the workplace.” If you see something, say something.
Forbes
A nearly extinct language lives on in Brooklyn It’s a scenario almost too improbable to believe. Seke, which means “golden language” is spoken in five villages in a remote part of Nepal called Mustang, close to Tibet. There are 700 speakers left in the world, 100 of them are in New York City. But 50 live in the same Flatbush apartment building. What is lost when we lose our words?
New York Times
Remembering a groundbreaking bias experiment: No Blonds Allowed In 1969, a Maryland school tried a controversial but effective experiment for National Brotherhood Week: Turn the tables on discrimination. On February 17, 1969, students arrived at Cabin John Junior High and were greeted by signs directing blond ones to side doors and were forced to use segregated drinking fountains and cafeteria tables. Worst of all, dark haired students, acting as hall monitors and enforcers, quickly became brutal. The experiment got national attention and parents protested. “[T]he message that blondes are inferior, undesirable persons was broadcast over the school’s public address system and circulated in a one-sheet newspaper,” reported the Washington Post at the time. While the experiment ended early, it had a big impact.
Washington Post
Quote
“Even seasoned educators can be confounded when confronted with student’s reactions to racial justice content, resistance to learning, microaggressions towards others, and/or aggressive comments or behaviors. Some instructors report freezing up in the face of emotionally charged moments in the classroom. Others, wary to ‘shut down’ dissenting views, are hesitant to challenge flawed logics embedded in student’s claims. Still other instructors adopt a paternalistic approach to teaching racial justice. In a thought-provoking essay considering teaching white students who are resistant to learning about racial in/justice, one instructor noted she had ‘retreated into didactic, inactive, unengaged pedagogy…’ and another confessed to ‘sarcastic needling as pedagogy.’”
—AmieThurber, M. Brielle Harbin, and Joe Bandy, "Teaching Race: Pedagogy and Practice"


fortune--2020-01-07--McConnell: GOP Will Start Impeachment Trial, Delay Witnesses

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he has secured the Republican votes needed to start President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and postpone a decision on witnesses or documents that Democrats want.
McConnell is expected to launch the trial as soon as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sends the articles of impeachment to the Senate. She is set to meet late Tuesday with her leadership team.
“We have the votes,” McConnell told reporters. He said the question of new witnesses will be addressed later “and not before the trial begins.”
The GOP leader told senators at their closed-door lunch Tuesday has support for his plan, which is modeled after Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial 20 years ago. It would start the trial first and postpone votes on witnesses until later in the process.
“He has 51, for sure,”‘ said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a top ally of the president, exiting the meeting.
Democrats are ramping up pressure on Republicans to insist on hearing from former national security adviser John Bolton and other witnesses, and not to go along with McConnell’s proposal to put off voting on new testimony until later. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calls it a “trap.”
“The Republican leader seems more concerned with being able to claim he went through the constitutional motions than actually carrying out our constitutional duty,” Schumer said Tuesday. He called it an “Alice in Wonderland logic.”
Just four GOP senators would be needed to deny McConnell his majority, but he appears to have locked up the votes. GOP leaders were conducting a whip count Tuesday to gauge support. Several GOP senators have indicated they want to hear from Bolton and other witnesses, but they are nevertheless standing with McConnell’s plan for starting the trial.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Tuesday the Clinton process “provided a pathway” to start the trial and consider witnesses “down the road.” He said he supports it.
“I’m comfortable with that process,” Romney said. “And at this stage, I’d like to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses with the right information, but that process will accommodate that.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has also said she supports McConnell’s approach. Others say they are not sure they even need to hear from Bolton or other witnesses.
“It’s not that I don’t want to hear from him,”said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “I want to hear from him when the House is willing to do their work and have the same agreement with the ambassador on their side of the Hill.”
Trump faces charges that he abused the power of the presidency by pressuring Ukraine’s new leader to investigate Democrats, using as leverage $400 million in military assistance that is critical for the ally as it counters Russia at its border.
The funding for Ukraine was eventually released but only after Congress intervened.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Donald Trump and the power of incumbency
—How the UN’s climate efforts could change the business world
—The wealthiest members of Congress—and how they made their millions
—USPS could privatize as early as next year
—2020 Crystal Ball: Predictions for the economy, politics, technology, and more
Get up to speed on your morning commute with Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter.