fortune--2020-03-03--How the Beach Boys became two separate, warring factions

Testing for coronavirus should be free , but it ’ s not always that simple

The Beach Boys began in the early 1960s as teenagers harmonizing in a Hawthorne, Calif., living room. Six decades later, they’ve sold over 100 million records worldwide, but they tour as two bands—and one’s Change.org petition to boycott the other wound up with 140,500 signatures.
The latest bone of contention? Trophy hunting.
“It has been brought to my attention that…the Beach Boys touring group licensed by Mike Love are headlining at the Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nevada,” the band’s cofounder Brian Wilson said in a statement early last month. “This organization supports trophy hunting, which both [original member] Al [Jardine] and I are emphatically opposed to.”
Love—the band’s lead singer and Wilson’s cousin—responded in his own statement: “We look forward to a night of great music in Reno and, as always, support freedom of thought and expression as a fundamental tenet of our rights as Americans.” (Neither Wilson nor Love was available to comment for this piece.)
It’s no secret that Wilson and Love have their differences. Their legacy has been pockmarked by lawsuits, all hurled by Love—for songwriting credits in 1993, against Jardine using the Beach Boys name on tour in 2003, and over a free CD included with Brian’s solo album Smile in 2005.
Left to right: Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson, and Love perform in 1964. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Wilson, who crafted forward-thinking Beach Boys classics like 1966’s Pet Sounds, tours in a deluxe tour bus with a sumptuous backing ensemble. Meanwhile, Love flies coach between gigs at fairgrounds, casinos, and corporate events, and mostly sticks to pre-1966 fun-in-the-sun hits.
But two bands performing Beach Boys music is nothing new. In fact, they’ve been cleaved in two almost since the beginning.
Brian stops touring with the band
In December 1964, three years after their formation, Brian suffered a nervous breakdown on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston for a concert. He soon flew home and was briefly replaced onstage by Glen Campbell before they hired Bruce Johnston, who is still with the band, in 1965.
While at home, Brian crafted Pet Sounds with the Wrecking Crew as his band and the other Beach Boys mostly as backing singers.
Brian Wilson directs from the control room while recording the album “Pet Sounds” in 1966 in Los Angeles. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
During this time, Love took a somewhat contrarian stance, reportedly dismissing Pet Sounds as audible only to “the ears of a dog,” which he later denied saying.
Regardless of who said what, their opposite public images—Brian as tortured artist, Love as calculating businessman—were arguably calcified. It didn’t help that drummer Dennis Wilson publicly called the Beach Boys mere “messengers” of his brother’s genius.
“Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys,” Dennis said. “He is all of it. Period. We’re nothing. He’s everything.”
Carl takes over
As Wilson’s schizoaffective disorder gradually consumed his life, his brother Carl stepped in as the band’s de facto leader.
Without Brian’s innovative approach, the Beach Boys’ popularity hit a low in the late 1960s. Although the other members were developing rapidly as artists, they opted to take creative half measures, holding their breath for Brian’s return.
In 1969, the Beach Boys completed their Capitol Records contract with 20/20, an album of outtakes from earlier, Wilson-led albums. The following year, they signed with Reprise Records, and, with that year’s Sunflower, they rebooted their image as earthy SoCal songwriters.
The Beach Boys perform in concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., before a crowd of more than 60,000 music fans, June 26, 1978. Ira Schwarz—AP Images
“I was scared at the time Sunflower came out,” Brian wrote in I Am Brian Wilson. “I felt like the band was slipping away from me.”
“Carl had assumed Brian’s role as our producer,” Love stated in his 2016 memoir Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy, written with James S. Hirsch. “[He] was well-suited to be a leader.”
Regardless, in 1976, they trumpeted Brian’s comeback—a bit prematurely.
“Brian’s back”
Brian returned to the band for 1976’s 15 Big Ones, a patchwork of originals and covers that earned lukewarm reviews.
“The record company made a big deal that I was on it,” Brian wrote in I Am Brian Wilson. “They had a big campaign with a ‘Brian’s Back!’ slogan.”
“There was only one problem,” Love wrote in Good Vibrations. “Brian wasn’t back.” (During the ensuing concerts, he claimed, Brian “sat on his stool in some medicated haze.”)
“A deeper schism emerged,” Love wrote in Good Vibrations, of what was happening between his and Wilson’s camps. “When we traveled, we chartered two planes, the costs be damned.” He usually flew with Johnston, and Wilson with Jardine.
In 1981, Carl took a leave of absence and was replaced by Jeffrey Foskett, who stayed with the band when Carl returned a year later. In 1983, Dennis drowned at age 39.
But just as the Beach Boys were close to being finished off, they were suddenly buoyed by an island-themed hit.
“A tropical contact high”
In 1988, Brian Wilson heard the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” on the radio, not knowing who it was by.
“When someone told me who was singing, I couldn’t believe it,” he wrote in I Am Brian Wilson. “It had such a cool sound and such great harmonies.” (Love claimed psychotherapist Eugene Landy blocked Wilson’s involvement; Brian simply stated he “couldn’t make it” to the session.)
The tropical-themed single—a writing collaboration between Love and producer Terry Melcher, John Phillips, and Scott MacKenzie, with Van Dyke Parks on accordion—was released as part of the soundtrack of the 1988 film Cocktail and peaked at No. 1.
All the while, Carl remained the glue of the band, shepherding them through projects like 1996’s Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, a collaborative album with country stars. In 1998, he died of lung cancer at 51, which effectively ended the band as a solitary unit.
The band fragments in two
Carl’s death left the band without their band director, their lead guitarist, and their co–lead singer, but it didn’t mean everyone was ready to call it a day.
“I could have retired or at least scaled back dramatically,” Love wrote in Good Vibrations. “But I wasn’t about to do that…I’d go crazy sitting around.”
The touring license for the Beach Boys is owned by Brother Records, the band’s holding company and record label, with Love, Jardine, Wilson, and Carl’s sons Justyn and Jonah as shareholders. As Love tells it in Good Vibrations, Brian Wilson was offered a license to tour under the name, but he turned it down.
Love with the Beach Boys in 1975. Fin Costello—Redferns/Getty Images
A few months later, Love claims, Brother Records sued Jardine on financial and compliance grounds, and Jardine lost his license. (Jardine declined to comment for this piece.) Love was then offered exclusive rights to the Beach Boys name, which he accepted.
Despite the win, Love still owed Brother Records 17.5% of all touring revenue, which went directly to the shareholders. This didn’t include management and agent fees, which further left him in the hole.
Love hit the road with his own Beach Boys, featuring Johnston, Foskett, guitarists Scott Totten and Brian Eichenberger, keyboardist Tim Bonhomme, and drummer John Cowsill.
‘The Walmart frame of mind’
With Love calling the shots, the Beach Boys no longer perform at football stadiums, rack up exorbitant liquor bills, or travel in limousines.
“All of the unnecessary amenities were either curtailed or eliminated,” Love wrote in Good Vibrations. “We don’t have anyone on payroll who is not essential, and we don’t squander money on garish stage props or fireworks or overblown production.” (Johnston summarized it to Rolling Stone as “the Walmart frame of mind.”)
Meanwhile, Brian’s 11-piece ensemble, which includes Jardine, Blondie Chaplin, and backing band the Wondermints, travels in luxury buses and stays in expensive hotel suites. He even travels with an oversize recliner that has followed him to multiple continents.
An ill-fated reunion
In 2012, the two Beach Boys bands—plus early guitarist David Marks—did the unthinkable and joined together for a 50th anniversary world tour and a new album, That’s Why God Made the Radio.
Despite positive reviews, the reunion ended on a sour note.
After the tour, Love returned to his usual Beach Boys lineup sans Wilson, Jardine, and Marks, leaving the three feeling jilted.
“I’m disappointed and can’t understand why he doesn’t want to tour with Al, David, and me,” Wilson told CNN. “After all, we are the real Beach Boys.”
“This tour was always envisioned as a limited run…Brian, Al and I signed an agreement outlining the beginning and end of the tour,” Love explained in an L.A. Times op-ed. “I did not fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I cannot fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I am not his employer.”
The Beach Boys 50th Anniversary Concert Tour at the Anselmo Valencia Amphitheater on April 24, 2012, in Tucson. Mike Moore—Getty Images
Brian responded with his own op-ed: “It Kinda Feels Like Getting Fired.” “While I appreciate the nice cool things Mike said about me in his letter…at the same time, I’m still left wondering why he doesn’t want to continue this great trip we’re on,” he wrote.
“I’m not sure if Brian, or whoever wrote the column for him, appreciated the irony of his statement,” Love shot back in Good Vibrations. “He could have accepted a Beach Boys license for himself, when it was offered, but he didn’t.”
“That tour ended in a weird way,” Brian said in I Am Brian Wilson. “He went back to the way things were before, where he was touring with the Beach Boys name.”
“And that,” he concluded, “was the end of the 50th reunion.”
Uneasy peace
Since the 2012 run, the Beach Boys have appeared together only once—as part of a SiriusXM interview to promote 2018’s The Beach Boys With the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
“I never say never,” Love told Rolling Stone afterward when asked about a potential reunion.
“I don’t think there will be another Beach Boys reunion,” Brian told Riff Magazine in 2019. “I got my own thing going on.”
The 2020 Safari Club debacle marks the first time one Beach Boy called for a boycott of the other, and at 77 and 78, respectively, it’s anyone’s guess how long Brian and Love will have to mend fences.
What was once a family band now resembles two warring corporations, both wheeling around the world to preach the gospel of sunshine and babes.
Once a family band, the Beach Boys became two separate and warring factions. Gems/Redferns/Getty Images
“Like many bands, this one was built around people who started in close proximity and with common cause and turned out to be very different,” Ben Greenman, who cowrote I Am Brian Wilson, tells Fortune. “Most of all, in how they wanted to use the band.”
“If the tide goes out, you can find yourself stranded on separate sandbars,” he added.
But in 60 years and despite the deaths of two key members, the band has miraculously never fully disbanded. Even after years of artistic and familial conflict, as Love declared in Good Vibrations: “I’m convinced that the Beach Boys’ appeal has no demographic boundaries, no technological limits, no expiration date.”
To that end, blood may run thicker than water—even if a petition suggests otherwise.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Emma. star and director on updating Jane Austen’s text through blood and tears
—Netflix and Disney+ prepare to do battle in Europe
—No, A.I. isn’t deciding which movies to green-light
—Breaking Bad ended six years ago—but Better Call Saul and merchandise keep gaining steam
—Contagion writer, scientific adviser reflect on film’s newfound relevance amid coronavirus crisis
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-03-03--Target’s next frontier: Convenience stores and alcohol pickup

Still benefitting from the momentum from a years-long effort to spruce up its merchandise and stores, Target is zeroing on its next big retail push: convenience stores.
The discount retailer’s top executives told Wall Street analysts at its annual strategy update on Tuesday that its 100 smaller format stores, typically 30,000 square foot—a fraction of the traditional Target’s size—have proved to be such a boon that Target will test out an even smaller 6,000-square-foot model. That’s about the size of a Dollar General store or a convenience store.
The idea would be to allow Target to nestle into smaller spaces in densely populated centers of cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, as well as near college campuses.
The 100 smaller stores Target operates collectively hit the $1 billion milestone last year. More crucially, they generate about three times the sales per square foot, a key retail metric, than its sprawling suburban stores that are typically 130,000 square feet in size.
“They are much more productive than our average stores,” Target chief executive Brian Cornell told the analysts. Smaller stores have allowed Target to get into markets like New York’s Tribeca and Herald Square and Boston’s Fenway and give the company additional nodes in its e-commerce distribution network.
The smaller convenience stores, the first of which should open in 2021, will each offer a different assortment according to their neighborhood’s needs. But the common threads will be beauty and home furnishings, along with grab-and-go food and convenience items. They will also be a place to retrieve orders placed online.
Just as it did with the current smaller stores, the first of which opened in 2014 in Minneapolis, Target will take its time refining the concept. But the company said it sees potential for a large fleet of the convenience-store sized locations.
“This design could open up hundreds of additional site options to serve even more people in new trade areas (markets),” Target’s operations chief, John Mulligan, said at the investor day. The presentation was originally set to be held in New York, but Target decided this weekend to webcast it instead from its headquarters in Minneapolis because of coronavirus concerns.
As for the stores smaller than its sprawling suburban emporia, Target plans to open another 36 of them this year, including shops in New York’s Times Square, the Las Vegas strip, and a Disney theme park. Cornell hinted many of the new stores in that format would appear at tourists hubs.
“There are few places that help travelers feel more at home than Target,” he said.
Updating its store fleet has been a key ingredient to Target’s stunning turnaround in the last three years. Since 2017, it has spent $4 billion on remodeling stores, updating their look but also equipping them to support e-commerce and offer drive-by pickup.
And it has paid off: Stores that have been remodeled, which now number 700 out of its 1,800 locations, have seen annual sales jump in the 2% to 4% range. This year, Target plans to remodel another 300 stores.
The remodeled stores’ improved set up has allowed Target to experiment and expand what it can offer online customers. Target said on Tuesday it was adding fresh groceries like milk and eggs, as well as alcohol products to the assortment eligible for drive up pickup of online orders. The company will start booze pickup at 100 stores in Florida and expects much of the rest of its stores nationwide to follow suit later this year.
Target could use the boost to sales. For all its strong results in the last three years, its holiday season was lackluster. Comparable sales were up only 1.5% in the fourth quarter, putting pressure on Target to keep finding new ways to generate revenue.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Contigo children’s water bottles recalled for possible choking hazard
—Lowe’s falls further behind Home Depot on e-commerce growth
—Land O’Lakes wants you to know the farmer behind your butter
—How “for women, by women” Lola views its investor’s Trump ties
—WATCH: Inside the algorithm powering Stitch Fix
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-03-03--Amazon Prime Video will stream 21 Yankees games this season

Amazon Prime Video will stream 21 Yankees games to members in New York’s broadcast market this season at no additional cost.
The games are produced by the Yankees’ YES Network and are all scheduled for broadcast on WPIX, YES said Tuesday.
Major League Baseball owners voted in November to have digital streaming rights within a team’s broadcast market revert to each club from Baseball Advanced Media starting with this season.
The Yankees reacquired control of YES in August, joining Amazon and the Sinclair Broadcast Group to buy an 80% stake from The Walt Disney Co. in a deal that valued YES at $3.47 billion. Disney was required to sell 21st Century Fox’s regional sports networks as part of its acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets.
Yankees Global Enterprises owns a 26% share in YES, while Sinclair owns 20% and Amazon 15% with the right to purchase more. The rest is split among RedBird Capital, The Blackstone Group and Mubadala Capital.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Netflix and Disney+ prepare to do battle in Europe
—Rob McElhenney talks about ‘‘Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet’
—‘Emma.’ star on updating Jane Austen’s text through blood and tears
—No, A.I. isn’t deciding which movies to green-light
—Content is king: Inside Netflix’s streaming wars strategy
Follow Fortune on Flipboard to stay up-to-date on the latest news and analysis.


fortune--2020-03-03--Andrew Yang is still the most visible Asian American in politics right now

How the Beach Boys became two separate , warring factions

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.
I’m on my way to the Great Place to Work For All Summit, sure to be rich fodder for many columns to come. Check my Twitter feed for more. Today, Fortune‘s newsletter editor Karen Yuan kicks off Super Tuesday with an important reminder that in an all-white, all-Baby Boomer field, representation matters more than ever. — Ellen McGirt
On Super Tuesday, the field of major Democratic candidates has narrowed down to Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders, and Warren. While speculations float over tonight’s voting outcome, we must note that it’s already the triumph of the white candidate. The most prominent candidates of color have dropped out. (Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race.)
But one of the most novel candidates of color has stayed relevant to the election—since suspending his campaign a few weeks ago, Andrew Yang has, for the second chapter of his political career, joined CNN as a political commentator. For the biggest day of voting in the election, Yang has already put in his two cents: “He may have a nearly insurmountable lead in the delegate count by mid-March,” he said of Sanders’ post-Super Tuesday run. Yes, Biden’s South Carolina win and slew of recent endorsements makes this sound a bit crazy, but the point isn’t that Yang’s analysis is right or wrong—it’s that he’s a talking head on TV at all.
Before the election shifts its focus onto white candidates once and for all, let me put on the record this: Andrew Yang is the most visible Asian American in politics in 2020.
Yang’s continued foothold in U.S. politics is expanding America’s view of Asian Americans and what’s possible for them on a national stage. Asian-American political leaders like Judy Chu and Ted Lieu serve in Congress, but Yang is one of the few Asian Americans to catapult himself into the spotlight of presidential candidates.
And it’s especially radical that, as an Asian American, he was one of the most charismatic candidates in the race.
“Research shows that Asian American men are often stereotyped as too passive, docile, and timid for leadership roles—too “nerdy,” if you will,” says Adia Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who examines inequality in professions. “This stereotyping can work to their detriment when it comes to attempts to advance to high-ranking positions. Seeing Andrew Yang as a candidate for presidency will ideally offset some of these misconceptions.”
He fist-bumped, danced, and crowd-surfed his way up the polls. One of the archetypes of the presidential candidate is the family man with machismo—and Yang, while representing a demographic whose masculinity is frequently undermined, embodied that fully on the campaign trail, with his wife and sons in tow. He walked a fascinating and effective balancing act between the trope of the nerdy Asian (“I am the math guy”) and that of the chummy, back-slapping, All-American dude—two cultural images historically opposed from one another.
That’s subversive, and not just for politics—though Wingfield added it was important to acknowledge that Yang did not enter the election through traditional politics.
raceAhead has discussed it before: While Asian Americans make up a significant amount of America’s professional world, they make up a scant amount of leaders in that world. In fact, they’re the least likely group in the U.S. to be promoted to leadership, whether that’s in politics, tech, or other business fields. Only 16 Asian CEOs make up this year’s entire Fortune 500.
“Asian American men frequently confront the stereotype that they do not have the ‘killer instinct’ required for leadership roles,” Wingfield says. “Stereotypes about their passivity and complacency work to their detriment.”
Yang was not expected to make it to the debate stage. He was not expected to raise the amount of money and support that he did. And he was not expected to outlast Cory Booker or Kamala Harris, the other major candidates of color. The surprise over Yang’s success is, in fact, “the general characterization of Asian Americans in leadership roles,” Buck Gee, a former Silicon Valley executive and advisor on Asian-American career advancement, says.
“This was not overt racial discrimination where people did not feel that an Asian American should not or cannot be on the stage,” Gee says, “but it was implicit bias that visible Asian American leaders are certainly welcome, but not expected.”
As an outsider, Yang has had to grapple with how to present his identity. Yang’s particular performance of Asianness—as an affable, almost race-neutral everyman—wasn’t welcomed by some, who criticized his tendency to avoid speaking on thorny topics related to race or issues affecting Asian Americans.
“Race remains a difficult if omnipresent subject in American politics, and it may have been challenging for Yang to find a way to incorporate a discussion of his racial identity into his personal, professional, and political narratives,” Wingfield says. But being silent over how issues affect Asian Americans doesn’t mean those issues are absent, she adds. “It just means that they remain unresolved.”
Still, the experts I spoke with say Yang has made a lasting positive impact on Asian Americans in leadership, for the most part.
“Andrew Yang’s candidacy bent the arc of leadership in America,” Thomas Sy, a psychology professor at University of California Riverside who studies leadership, says. “However small, this subtle shift in trajectory may create a broader podium for future Asian Americans leaders, as well as other minority leaders.”
Gee says he found the reaction to Yang from Asian Americans, while not without critique, largely positive—proving that they are “desperately looking for Asian American role models in visible positions of leadership.”
And Yang himself has reflected on his visibility. Speaking of his own legacy, he told Politico: “One of my goals in the campaign was imagining what it’d be like for me as a young Asian American kid turning on the TV and seeing an Asian American presidential candidate on the debate stage.”
Karen Yuan
@karenyuan_
karen.yuan@fortune.com
On Point
The Guardian finds Texas is closing polling stations in Black and Latinx communities The Guardian based their analysis on a 2019 report by civil rights group The Leadership Conference Education Fund, identifying 750 polling sites that had been closed in Texas since 2012. Their analysis confirms fears of voting rights advocates: The 50 counties that gained the most Black and Latinx residents between 2012 and 2018 closed 542 polling sites, compared to just 34 in the 50 counties that have gained the fewest black and Latinx residents. Officials cite budget constraints and difficulty recruiting poll workers for the closures.
The Guardian
Black-owned business besieged by racist comments after appearing in a Target ad Bea Dixon founded The Honey Pot, a plant-based hygiene product, in 2014. Soon after, Target took a chance on the small business, placing the product in certain stores. Then, they invited Dixon to appear in a television ad about her business, part of a series called “Founders We Believe In.” She was appropriately inspirational. “The reason why it’s so important for Honey Pot to do well so that the next Black girl that comes up with a great idea, she can have a better opportunity. That means a lot to me,” she says in the ad. For some reason, her comments triggered a spate of negative comments on her review page. “Racist company. Black fragility on full display,” said one. Another said the “racially motivated component to the company,” made her uncomfortable. The fight quickly spilled onto social media.
The Grio
Goldman Sachs steps up investment in Black and Latinx company founders It’s an expansion of its Launch with GS initiative, Goldman Sachs’ $500 million investment scheme aimed at connecting promising underrepresented company founders with resources and connections. The new Black and Latinx Entrepreneur Cohort is the first of its kind. “Black and Latinx founders collectively receive less than 1% of venture funding,” said Jemma Wolfe, head of Launch With GS, in a statement. “We believe that by engaging early with Black and Latinx entrepreneurs, we lay a foundation to support, scale, and invest in an important group of fast growing start-ups.” The cohort will participate in an 8 week program, ending in an invite-only showcase for key investors. raceAhead plans to follow this story, so stay tuned.
Goldman Sachs
ACLU claims NYC’s ICE uses a rigged algorithm to justify the detention of all arrestees A new lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and Bronx Defenders claims that a software tool used to recommend whether people arrested over immigration violations should be let go or detained has been tweaked to recommend nearly everyone, even those of low risk to public safety. Using data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, the suit shows that from the years 2013-2017, the software recommended detention without bond for low-risk individuals 53% of the time; under the Trump administration, that number jumped to 97%. The suit is asking that ICE’s “Risk Classification Assessment” tool be ruled illegal and the status of all detainees reassessed by humans. The Intercept
On Background
Diversity and inclusion professionals, experts are exhausted This post, based in part on an open-ended survey conducted by the diversity consultancy The Winters Group, paints a stark picture of what D&I practitioners, researchers, and experts are facing: Collective burnout. “It’s never enough, is it? No matter what I do, it’s never enough. I don’t have enough capacity – financial, emotional, mental – to make positive impacts on everything that warrants it,” says one respondent. Frustration about being unable to make systemic changes turns to shame; dealing with people’s pain becomes overwhelming. “Now, I recognize that this work is a lot more intense and draining than I was expecting,” says another. “Once you begin working in the space, you quickly realize that D&I is personal for EVERYONE... Often times, people are in pain, and it is deep-rooted and palpable,” says another. Please read, share and check in with the inclusion-focused people in your life, whether they are working in an official capacity or not.
The Inclusion Solution blog
Kicking hate groups off of social media helps fight hate Well, what do you know? A new report from the UK-based advocacy group Hope Not Hate shows that de-platforming people who run hate groups minimizes their ability to raise money, recruit followers, and organize public events. But the practice is not without debate — charismatic alt-right members who haven’t been charged with a crime frequently invoke their right to free speech. One such figure, a white supremacist named Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has had his reach curtailed from more than a million followers to some 42,000 after being kicked off Twitter, Facebook, and having his YouTube curtailed. “Deplatforming is not straightforward, but it limits the reach of online hate, and social media companies have to do more and do more now,” says the report.
HuffPo UK
A handy guide to cultural misappropriation Simon Fraser University in Vancouver has a thoughtful resource that can help people distinguish between borrowing themes for creative inspiration or tribute – which is good, and creating work that disrespects, or does unintentional emotional and economic harm to a group of people. That would be bad. These are not always easy aesthetic distinctions, but there are often legal ones. For example, the Navajo Nation owns 86 trademark registrations that prevent designers from appropriating their imagery.
Simon Fraser University
Tamara El-Waylly produces raceAhead and manages the op-ed program.
Quote
“My brother wasn’t murdered because he was white or because he was an activist. He was murdered because, to the people that murdered him, black lives didn’t matter. To a lot of people, they still don’t matter… [this case is] an opportunity for us to recognize history in the context of the present moment. Nothing is closed about racism in America.”
—David Goodman, brother of voting rights activist Andrew Goodman, one of three people who were murdered for helping register Black voters in Mississippi in 1964. Those murders remain unsolved.


fortune--2020-03-03--Justices likely to preserve SEC power to recoup fraud money

Andrew Yang is still the most visible Asian American in politics right now

The Supreme Court seemed prepared Tuesday to preserve an important tool that federal securities regulators used last year to recoup $3.2 billion in ill-gotten gains in fraud cases.
At most, the justices might impose some limits on how the Securities and Exchange Commission seeks repayment, or disgorgement, of profits from people who have been found to violate securities law.
But no one on the court appeared ready to say that the SEC lacks the power to ask a federal court to order repayment of money obtained through fraud. That was the argument made by a lawyer for a husband and wife who were ordered to cough up $27 million after a federal court found they engaged in a fraudulent scheme to lure Chinese investors to back a cancer center in southern California.
“Isn’t it an equitable principle that no one should be allowed to profit from his own wrong?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Gregory Rapawy, the lawyer for Charles Liu and Xin “Lisa” Wang.
He responded that his clients should not be worse off than they were. Liu and Wang together reaped profits of $8.2 million from their scheme, but were ordered to repay $27 million based on what investors poured into the fraudulent project. the bulk of it was used for marketing and property development, Rapawy said.
Liu and Wang are relying on a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 2017 that already limited the SEC’s ability to go after profits where alleged fraud has been going on for years before authorities file charges.
The 2017 case left open whether courts have the authority to order disgorgement of profits. The SEC meanwhile has continued to aggressively pursue defendants’ profits in fraud cases. A year ago, for instance, the SEC persuaded a federal judge in Florida to order defendants in an alleged Ponzi scheme to repay $892 million in profits.
A decision in Liu v. SEC, 18-1501, is expected by late June.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How psychedelic drugs may revolutionize mental health care
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
—Funding for female founders increased in 2019—but only to 2.7%
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—How to think about COVID-19
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-03-03--It’s too late for the U.S. to fight the spread of coronavirus with domestic travel restrictions

Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.
Chinese authorities banned flights and cut off rail and highway travel to quarantine the city of Wuhan, a city of 11 million people who are mostly confined to their neighborhoods by the coronavirus outbreak.
In the U.S., the virus has already spread so far that experts say such draconian limits on domestic travel probably wouldn’t be effective. But the outbreak could still have widespread effects on transportation as people opt to stay home and transit workers call in sick.
“When you’re dealing with an influenza virus-like transmissions, it’s like trying to control the wind,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at University of Minnesota. “People may want to try to limit their time in large crowds, but I don’t think that a domestic limitation on travel is going to help at all.”
At least 100 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the U.S. Six deaths linked to the virus have been confirmed in Washington state, most clustered around a nursing home. The state is preparing for a wider outbreak to take place and setting up isolation centers for patients.
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.
Osterholm and other experts say cutting off transportation options would do little to blunt the further spread of the virus, and may cause more harm than good. For one, the appearance of the coronavirus in 10 states from New York to California with more cases expected has all but neutered the potential of travel restrictions to contain the virus, Osterholm said.
“This virus is already all around the country,” he said. “Think of this like seasonal influenza. We have regions that in any given week have more activity than other regions, but by the time the entire season is done, it’s covered the entire country. And when was the last time anyone thought of quarantining the United States for seasonal influenza?”
Prior research also suggests travel restrictions have limited effect. A 2011 study examining a theoretical influenza epidemic in New York City found that people infected on the subway accounted for only 4% of all infections, and that efforts to prevent transmission on subways did little to dampen the broader outbreak. A separate study in 2006 found that imposing border restrictions along with domestic travel restrictions were unlikely to delay the spread of an influenza pandemic by more than a few weeks.
Travel restrictions might make sense as a means to contain a large outbreak in one city or region if other areas are less affected, said Jeff Schlegelmilch, deputy director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Officials weighing such a move would have to compare the costs of inaction against those of restricting access to a city.
“If done correctly it can slow the transmissions, and again that’s what all of these are about. It’s not about stopping it, it’s about slowing it,” he said. “Whether or not it’s a good idea depends on a lot of other factors.”
For example, imposing restrictions on domestic travel also risks cutting off critical supplies when communities need them most, he said.
“There’s always a trade off between disrupting transportation and disrupting access, and in today’s world where things move so fast, it seems that the costs of quarantining or of shutting down areas can be even greater than it used to be because we rely on so much from the outside,” he said.
Those tradeoffs and others were highlighted by the George W. Bush administration in a 2006 report summarizing how the federal government would respond to an influenza pandemic. For one, the report noted that people could get around flight restrictions by taking their car or a train.
The 233-page report by the White House’s Homeland Security Council suggested some of the largest transportation impacts of the virus will be caused by regular people, rather than government restrictions.
Absenteeism during an influenza pandemic could limit transportation services, it warned. In addition, “passenger transportation will likely decrease as the public opts not to travel due to possible exposure. This will likely begin in international aviation, cruise ships, and highway border crossings. Once cases are present in the United States, this decrease in passenger travel will occur domestically in private automobile, aviation, mass transit, passenger rail, and motor coach travel,” the report said.
It also warned that closing state or local borders would be “highly unlikely” to be effective, and could cause shortages of key supplies.
“If you’re in a situation where you have sustained community wide-transmission that is of a significant threat to people’s health, if you have a high fatality rate, and the value of restricting travel is greater than the cost of that disruption, that’s when you would want to employ it,” Schlegelmilch said. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near that right now.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.


fortune--2020-03-03--With stocks down sharply are we approaching ‘buy’ territory? Not by a longshot.

Even with the S&P 500’s big bounce on March 2, the index has shed 8.9% since hitting an all-time high on February 19. So has the big, rapid-fire selloff sent the overall market into bargain territory?
If, like Wall Street’s ever-optimistic market strategists, you were bullish before the fall, you’ve probably concluded that the big drop presents a great buying opportunity. Buyer beware: The bedrock metrics show that stocks have simply gone from outrageously overpriced to extremely overpriced. The coronavirus scare will surely hit profits, but the main reason stocks are vulnerable isn’t the economic punch from the outbreak. It’s that prices roared ahead while earnings stalled, creating a mismatch between inflated valuations dependent on rising profits, and profits that hit a wall.
When the S&P 500 reached its mid-February summit of 3394, the price-to-earnings ratio stood at a lofty 24.2, based on S&P projected 12 month trailing earnings, through Q1 2020, of $140. That’s 21% above its 20 year average of roughly 20, and almost 40% over the 70 year norm of 17.5. The nearly 9% drop lowered the multiple to 20.2––leaving shares about as expensive as during most of the last two decades, an era where they’ve been richly priced.
As always, equities deliver returns in two packages: dividends, and capital gains. Let’s start with dividends. At the recent peak, rising prices had driven the yield to just 1.87%, well below the average of over 3% for the since 1951. This year, companies spent an amount equal to 42% of their earnings on those dividends.
Three factors drive capital gains: share buybacks, growth in profits, and “multiple expansion,” or a rising price-to-earnings ratio. Today the S&P 500 are spending the equivalent of all earnings that don’t go to dividends on buybacks. (They’re able to fund internal investment through added borrowing.) If the S&P continues to steer cash equivalent to over half their profits to repurchases, share counts will fall by 3.1%. That would lift earnings per share by a like amount, so if the PE––the figure by which you multiply those earnings to get the share price––stays at 20.2, the S&P index will advance by the same 3.1%. Hence, if the current PE of 20.2 holds, you’ll get a combined 4.95% return from dividends and buybacks alone.
But these improvements when it comes to dividends and capital gains are minor when compared to the abyss below. The reason markets are suspended over a gulf spinning their wheels to stay airborne like cartoon character Wile E. Coyote? It’s the danger of high valuations, on top of extraordinarily elevated, unsustainable earnings that aren’t growing at all, and will probably fall, smashing Wall Street’s gravity-defying predictions.
At $140 a share, profits still sit at historic highs, 40% above their level just three years ago, in Q1 of 2017. So today’s 20-plus PE is putting a high valuation on what looks like an earnings bubble. For confirmation, look at the CAPE, or cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio, a measure developed by Robert Shiller, the Yale professor and Nobel laureate. Shiller adjusts the multiple by using a ten-year average of inflation-adjusted profits, a methodology that smooths the lurching swings that make equities look cheap when profits spike to unusual heights, and pricey when earnings drop so low that they’re destined to rebound.
Even after the big drop, the Shiller PE registers 29.3. It’s never stayed at a level that high for long, and the only times it’s been higher were the runup to the market crash in 1929, and the tech bubble of 2000. If earning were rising rapidly, the outlook wouldn’t be nearly as scary. But that’s not the case. Quarterly earnings went flat starting in Q2 of 2018, and are have barely budged since then. Worse, the analysts polled by S&P predict no gains in Q2 over Q1, and those queried by research firm FactSet predict an increase of just .7%. Of course, the S&P analysts also forecast a surge in the second half of this year, driving annual earnings up 16% to $163, and in the process, lowering the PE to 18.7. If you’re wondering where the 18 or so PE the business TV shows keep talking about, it’s based on that phantom forecast. It won’t happen.
Keep in mind that the coronavirus is likely to hammer earnings a lot harder than the analyst are positing. Add that threat to what the Shiller data tells us: That an adjusted PE of anything approaching today’s high-flying 29 always heads earthwards. Say the Shiller PE drops to its long-term average of around 20 by the end of this year. Reversion to the mean is one of the market’s ruling forces. If valuations, measured by the Shiller benchmark, return to normal by the dawn of 2021, the S&P would fall 31% to 2150.
Now that would be a real buying opportunity.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—A Fed rate cut won’t cure what’s ailing the stock market
—How companies like Ernst & Young are going to extremes to avoid infections
—These cities have the most jobs with six-figure salaries
—Credit Karma was acquired rather than pursuing an IPO. Will more companies follow suit in 2020?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-03-03--More and more companies are gaining an appetite for A.I. acquisitions

This is the web version of Eye on A.I., Fortune’s weekly newsletter covering artificial intelligenceand business. To get it delivered weekly to your in-box, sign up here.
Since Bill McDermott became its CEO in November, business software maker ServiceNow has made a couple of notable A.I.-related acquisitions.
In January, the company said it would acquire both Passage AI, which specializes in technology that helps computers understand language, and Loom Systems, a startup that uses machine learning to spot errors in corporate infrastructure for IT staff.
Those two acquisitions came on top of another acquisition by ServiceNow in October of machine learning and natural language processing startup Attivio, which took place just weeks before McDermott officially started on the job in November.
It’s no coincidence that ServiceNow, which sells software to IT professionals but is expanding to other areas, is going on an A.I. acquisition binge, McDermott, the former CEO (and Co-CEO) of business software giant SAP told Fortune. Gobbling up small machine-learning focused startups helps ServiceNow with its plan to embed its products with A.I. as well as obtain A.I. talent in a tight market. Acquisitions are now core to ServiceNow’s A.I. strategy, akin to what Salesforce, Intel, and Apple have been doing in recent years.
“We are continuing to invest in A.I.—we are continuing to invest in deep machine learning and all the predictive analytics that go into the platform,” McDermott said.
Research firm CB Insights said last fall that there have been about 635 A.I.-related acquisitions from 2010 to 2019, underscoring the business world’s increasing interest in A.I. And while tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are among the biggest acquirers of A.I. startups, CB Insights said “today, smaller AI startups are becoming acquisition targets for traditional insurance, retail, and healthcare incumbents.”
McDermott is especially excited about natural language processing, which has helped ServiceNow create services that can automatically translate languages for its clients. These language-translation features are helpful, he explained, when, for instance, a customer’s IT staff in Germany needs to troubleshoot problems originating from Japan.
By acquiring A.I. companies, ServiceNow can also now tell customers that it’s investing in A.I. at a time when every tech company seems to be doing so.
“No question,” said McDermott.
Still, one problem that often comes up for companies that acquire many smaller businesses is a convoluted product portfolio that may confuse customers. Too many A.I. acquisitions can lead to a puzzling spiderweb of products and services.
To offset any potential problems, McDermott said ServiceNow “immediately” integrated all of the recent technologies from the companies it acquired into its own services. Doing so earlier rather than later is important so that clients aren’t left trying to figure out how each new product works with their own technologies.
Regarding future A.I. acquisitions, McDermott insinuated that more are likely.
As he put it, “You can’t solve 21st century problems with 20th century technology.”
Jonathan Vanian
@JonathanVanian
jonathan.vanian@fortune.com
A.I. IN THE NEWS
The DoD chimes in on A.I. ethics. The U.S. Department of Defense introduced its “ethical principles for the use of Artificial Intelligence” after a 15-month period of consulting with “leading AI experts in commercial industry, government, academia and the American public.” The Defense Department’s ethical principles involve A.I. that is responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable. Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, explained to reporters why the principles lack specific recommendations, government trade publication Breaking Defense reported. “Tech adapts, tech evolves,” the publication quoted Shanahan as saying. “The last thing we wanted to do was put handcuffs on the department to say what we could and could not do. So the principles now have to be translated into implementation guidance.”
A.I.’s coronavirus problem. Some companies that make A.I.-powered health-diagnostic aren’t updating their technology to account for the coronavirus, the Wall Street Journal reported. The article explains that because some of these tools are “built on machine learning,” they “are difficult to tweak for a new virus,” in which data is relatively scant. “Any little-before-seen, highly infectious disease for which data is scarce could pose similar challenges for even the more sophisticated of such technologies,” the article said.
Self-driving cars are not cheap to make. Waymo, the autonomous automobile company that’s a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, said it raised $2.25 billion in funding from investors like Silver Lake Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The deal is noteworthy for being the company’s first investment outside of Alphabet.
Get a grip. In recent years, several A.I. startups have emerged that specialize in creating software that helps robotic grippers better pick and place objects then they have in the past. While many of these startups have bragged about their capabilities, tech publication VentureBeat reported that roboticists have yet to agree upon benchmarks that can measure progress in robotic gripping.
EYE ON A.I. TALENT
Intel’s chief of its A.I. platforms group, Naveen Rao, said on Twitter that he is leaving the company, but did not say where is going. Gadi Singer, Intel’s vice president of A.I. products, will take over Rao’s previous responsibilities, tech publication Tom’s Hardware reported. Rao’s departure comes after Intel’s recent $2 billion purchase of A.I. chip maker Habana Labs and its decision to stop producing A.I. chips from its 2016 purchase of Rao’s former startup Nervana Systems.
The Partnership on A.I. (PAI), a nonprofit whose members hail from companies like Apple and Facebook as well as universities and research and legal groups, added three new board members: Rebecca Finlay, the vice president of engagement and public policy for the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research, an organization that does research and charity; Thore Graepel, a research group lead at Google’s DeepMind unit; and Prem Natarajan, the vice president for Amazon’s Alexa A.I. group. The PAI said that Graepel would replace “Mustafa Suleyman’s DeepMind seat on the board,” while Prem would “assume Ralf Herbrich’s previous Amazon seat.”
Sisu, a startup specializing in machine learning and business analytics, hired Berit Hoffmann to be its vice president of product. Hoffmann was previously a product head for Google and its hire and cloud talent service.
EYE ON A.I. RESEARCH
This may be harder than we thought. Researchers from Google published a paper that details some of the challenges of using machine learning technologies to anonymize healthcare patient data, which the researchers said would benefit other researchers. The authors wrote that while some automatic de-identification systems have already surpassed “that of human annotators,” healthcare companies have yet to widely use the technologies because those systems “cannot guarantee performance on all medical text it will ever encounter.” Stat News, a news publication focusing on health, has a good summary of the paper: “Even their best efforts to de-identify health data, or to render it anonymous, would leave some people exposed.”
FORTUNE ON A.I.
In A.I., what would Jesus do?—Jeremy Kahn
Here’s what’s next for a self-driving car startup that’s poised to make history—By Eric C. Evarts
No, A.I. isn’t deciding which movies to green-light—By Dan Reilly
How A.I. helps sniff out new antibiotics—By Sy Mukherjee
College backlash against facial recognition technology grows—By David Morris
Four takeaways from the annual RSA security conference—By Jonathan Vanian
BRAIN FOOD
An A.I. dungeon master. A.I.’s next big breakthrough could mean so-called dungeon masters in the classic role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons may be one day replaced by software that generates coherent narratives. Wired examined a recent A.I. research paper detailing a Georgia Tech graduate student’s quest to create a capable A.I. dungeon master. Pulling off the feat would be impressive because a dungeon master must create logical, fantastical narratives that make for fun adventures for human players. The report explained that although current state-of-the-art natural language processing technologies can occasionally produce impressive text far better than previous software, they still create a lot of strange nonsense, indicating that these systems lack a fundamental understanding of language. But further research into A.I. and language, such as the recent paper about dungeon masters, could help humans understand what makes good storytelling, Georgia Tech researcher Lara Martin told Wired.


fortune--2020-03-03--Robinhood trading app remains down for a second day

For the second day in a row, traders who use the Robinhood app to buy and sell stocks were unable to conduct trades.
The company, which reported a “major outage” on Monday was down again Tuesday morning, following news the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a half-point, the biggest reduction in 12 years.
At 11:35 a.m. ET, the company said “partial service” had been restored, an upgrade form the “system-wide outage” the company announced via its website at 10:00 a.m. ET.
But users who tried to email the company to address the outage were unable to, as the company’s email support system remains down as well.
The crash comes after Robinhood announced Monday evening that it was “back up and running” after missing the entire trading day, when the stock market saw the biggest one-day gains in its history.
Robinhood has been a popular tool for millennial investors, due to its commission-free policy and openness to cryptocurrencies. The company has not given a reason for either of the outages, though one possible cause is a surge in trade volume as investors grow more concerned with the coronavirus outbreak.
Even though the problem was partially resolved within a couple of hours, a second day of outages appeared to be testing the goodwill of the company’s customer base. Chris Morris
Well I'll have to admit, I'm a sucker. I calmed down last night about the #robinhood outage, and was ready to give them another chance.
Behold, we're 30 minutes in today and it's down again.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I'm out#RobinHooddown — Quinton Thurmond (@QuintonThurmond) March 3, 2020
https://twitter.com/Dennis_Beezy/status/1234852010618433537
Robinhood completely blowing up their $8 billion valuation with two straight days of outages #robinhoodoutage #robinhood pic.twitter.com/CdG6ZN2FJy — RogueStoolie (@RogueStoolie) March 3, 2020
Me trying to get Robinhood to place my order. #robinhoodoutage pic.twitter.com/WX9YYiBcnc — Missplaced (@MuddledPuzzle) March 3, 2020
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—A Fed rate cut won’t cure what’s ailing the stock market
—How companies like Ernst & Young are going to extremes to avoid infections
—These cities have the most jobs with six-figure salaries
—Credit Karma was acquired rather than pursuing an IPO. Will more companies follow suit in 2020?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-03-03--Amazon’s Alexa can now give you detailed information on your medications

This is the web version of Brainstorm Health Daily, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top health care news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Good morning, readers.
Some busy times here with the cascade of news surrounding the coronavirus (stay tuned for a big dispatch on that soon—and follow all of Fortune‘s coverage of this public health threat here).
But I did want to share an interesting digital health development. Amazon, which has been steadily expanding its medical ambitions via its moves into the online pharmacy space and, notably, HIPAA compliance for its voice-activated Alexa service, has struck a new medical information partnership with First Databank.
With this alliance, Alexa will be able to answer questions about drug safety, side effects, and drug-on-drug interactions.
“We are proud to bring this essential component of our drug databases directly to consumers through Amazon’s now-ubiquitous and helpful voice-activated technology,” said Bob Katter, president of First Databank, in a statement.
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
VistaScan gets FDA clearance for smartphone ultrasounds. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted clearance to Emagine Solutions Technology's smartphone ultrasound application, dubbed the VistaScan mobile ultrasound system. To be clear, it's not like physicians can just wave their smartphones over a patient—there are probes that must be linked to the tech. But it does allow them to see ultrasound images in real time on ultrasounds and tablets, which can prove critical during an emergency situation. (Medgadget)
INDICATIONS
Novartis' Sandoz unit to pay $195 million fine in landmark antitrust case. Sandoz, the generic drug arm of Swiss pharma giant Novartis, will pay a nearly $200 million fine over a price fixing scandal that's been brewing for more than six years. Sandoz will have to admit guilt as part of the settlement, and the Justice Department says the fine is the largest of its kind for a domestic antitrust suit. (The Associated Press)
THE BIG PICTURE
Supreme Court to take up high stakes Obamacare case (again). To use an outdated reference, Obamacare is a flat circle. Yes, the Affordable Care Act, signed into law ten years ago, is heading to the Supreme Court yet again. The Trump administration has been supporting a lawsuit to scrap the entirety of the law after the repeal of its individual insurance mandate. What the justices will focus on in this latest challenge to the ACA is whether or not that clause is "severable" from the rest of the health law, including its protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions and expansion of Medicaid.
REQUIRED READING
Jack Welch: For a time, the most valuable CEO on earth, by Geoff Colvin
The stock market's gyrations feel historic. But are they?, by Ben Carlson
Everything you wanted to know about Super Tuesday but were afraid to ask, by Nicole Goodkind
Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.


fortune--2020-03-03--Why running a healthy studio is its own design challenge

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.
I caught up with designer, artist, and Brainstorm Design regular Daan Roosegaarde over the weekend and our conversation inevitably veered towards one of his favorite topics: The tricky work of running your own studio. Roosegaarde strongly believes that leading people while building a successful, sustainable business is an independent designer’s greatest design challenge.
With headquarters in Rotterdam, Studio Roosegaarde currently employs 38 people—a number Roosegaarde feels is optimum for fulfilling the diversity of work that comes their way, while not losing touch with the team. And the work is certainly diverse, from building smog-eating towers and energy-producing dance floors to developing the Space Waste Lab, which aims to capture and recycle the 8.1 million kilos of broken rocket and satellite pieces floating around the earth. His most recent project, Levenslicht, is an interactive monument for Dutch Holocaust victims made from 104,000 luminescent stones.
After our lunch, I read a story about the artist Damien Hirst. In an interview with British magazine Idler, Hirst describes how he came close to financial ruin—after a period of time in which he earned £40 million a week. That can partially be explained by his previously hedonistic lifestyle. But more than that, he says, he totally lost control of his studio.
By the time of Hirst’s 2012 retrospective at Tate Modern, no less than 250 people worked for him. “You start by thinking you’ll get one assistant and before you know it you’ve got biographers, fire eaters, jugglers, f***ing minstrels, and lyre players all wandering around,” he says. “They’re all saying they aren’t being paid enough and they all need assistants. Then one night you ask the lyre player to play for you and they say: ‘My lyre is all scratched up and I did ask for a lyre technician but you said not yet and if I had one I could come and play for you now.’ So you’ve got to have a lyre technician and then you better get him an Uber account too.”
A studio of 250 employees, compared to a modest 38. Roosegaarde certainly seems to be achieving a balance of art and commerce, and Hirst’s reflections shed light on why that accomplishment is indeed its own kind of design feat. Take heed all those considering hiring that minstrel.
More design news below.
Tony Chambers
VISION, EMPATHY, SCALE
This edition of Business By Design was curated by Margaret Rhodes.
Open captioning. A group of volunteers is working to make Reddit more accessible by writing hyper-detailed captions for popular memes and videos. Alt text is becoming de rigueur for media outlets and professionally-run websites, but user-generated social media content doesn’t always account for visually impaired people who rely on text-to-speech tools to navigate images. These self-described “human volunteer content transcribers” offer an interesting model for how sprawling content sites like Reddit could work for more people. [Wired UK]
Visual culture. Even before the United States had confirmed cases of coronavirus, misplaced consumer fear of the outbreak started to take a toll on businesses in Chinese American neighborhoods like Chinatown in Manhattan and Flushing in Queens. Now that New York has its first confirmed case, images continue to perpetuate potentially harmful stereotypes: For instance, New York Post ran a photo of people in Flushing, even though, as one journalist on Twitter points out, New York’s first coronavirus patient lives in Manhattan. [New York Post]
Waste not. With all the materials exhibits require, art shows generate a lot of waste. So for an exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the design duo Formafantasma, known for material experimentations, built display pieces intended for eventual reuse. The sheets of steel, plywood boxes, and Kvadrat fabrics supply the backdrop for a show of baroque Roman art; after June 7, the material will get recycled or donated. [Dezeen]
A new watercooler. LinkedIn wants to make business networking fun by launching a digital product similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories. If launched (the unnamed product is still being tested with a select group of users), this would build on LinkedIn’s new, voicey editorial platforms by letting companies broadcast moments from work or carry on informal conversations with job candidates—a move that might prove useful in recruiting Generation Z workers. [The Verge]
Anthony Behar—SIPA/AP Images
Staying power. Michael Hertz, the New York designer who created the city’s modern subway map, died last month. Until 1979, New Yorkers relied on Massigmo Vignelli’s famous Modernist one, which, while instantly beloved, didn’t relate the subterranean train system to the above-ground world. Hertz rehauled the map by drawing parks and waterways to give riders wayfinding clues. His map is still used by millions today. [The New York Times]
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Over 70 museums across the U.S. have committed to showcasing feminist art by Anna Ben Yehuda Rahmanan
The coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens when the virus is gone? by Eamon Barrett
Here’s what’s next for a self-driving car startup that’s poised to make history by Eric C. Evarts
Female founders got more funding than ever in 2019. But still less than WeWork took in. by Emma Hinchliffe
The oil industry is finally talking climate crisis, but don’t expect change to come easily by Katherine Dunn
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—AROUND THE WEB
Milan’s Salone del Mobile furniture fair postponed until June due to coronavirus from Dezeen
IDEO Designers Share the Best Creative Advice They’ve Ever Received from IDEO
Our intersections are too dangerous. Here’s how to fix them. from Curbed
Garbage Language: Why do corporations speak the way they do? from New York
Love and Squalor from Design Observer
PLASTIC BAG BANS: SOLUTION OR PANACEA?
“The system is the problem”
New York’s statewide plastic bag ban took effect this weekend to a chorus of praise from eco-conscious types on Instagram and media outlets like The New York Times, which bid farewell to the city’s many bags by photographing them. (Viewed together, the graphic design on the bags is so good you might feel almost wistful to see them go.)
New Yorkers use a reported 23 billion plastic bags each year, and any measure that reduces single-use plastic is important. But the law also feels spiritually familiar to the plastic straw backlash. Carrying a reusable tote and sipping from a metal straw are both easy, worthwhile actions people can take towards reducing waste. Both also risk becoming a panacea—a do-good, feel-good moment that makes you forget about how much of the problem still exists.
Don Norman, director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego and one of the people credited with creating the human-centered design discipline, sojourned into the depths of that problem—of waste, plastics, and recycling. In a two-part essay series in Fast Company, Norman examines the tangled recycling industry through the eyes of a designer, and comes away appalled at how the inconsistencies between recycling companies have led to a user-hostile experience for doing away with waste. Different companies accept different materials; plastics get coded with hard-to-find numbers that correlate to different, opaque recycling rules. “The system is not designed to solve the problem: The system is the problem,” Norman writes.
“The real culprit in the story of recycling is failure to identify the core, underlying problem. Recycling is the symptom. The underlying problem is the design and manufacturing of so much stuff that has to be discarded … I do not see a widespread attempt to use materials that are readily reusable. Instead, the burden is placed upon the citizens of the world: Recycle or be punished!”
Norman ultimately lands on a broad, sweeping solution, pointing out that businesses can stop manufacturing objects that will eventually head to a bin. We’ve heard this line of rhetoric before. Unfortunately, that isn’t happening, and plastic production hasn’t slowed down. And plastic bags may be banned in New York, but they’re actually protected in some other states. Plastic waste might be a design problem, but it bears repeating: Businesses, not tote-carrying consumers, have the power to fix it.


fortune--2020-03-03--Coronavirus is affecting everything, even Diet Coke

People are already hoarding masks, hand sanitizer, and canned goods because of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Could Diet Coke be next?
The Coca-Cola company, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, said it depends on Chinese suppliers for sweeteners that are a key ingredient to the popular diet soda. The company also warned of possible supply chain issues in the long term, should the outbreak continue to grow.
That key ingredient is called “sucralose” and it’s used in everything from Diet Coke to Powerade Zero to Dasani flavored waters. Coke says it is implementing procedures to procure the ingredient from other sources and does not foresee a short-term impact, but said it could experience “tighter supplies” in the long term.
“As a result of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 … our suppliers in China have experienced some delays in the production and export of these ingredients,” the company said in its filing. “We have initiated contingency supply plans and do not foresee a short-term impact due to these delays. However, we may see tighter supplies of some of these ingredients in the longer term should production or export operations in China deteriorate.”
Coke added it expects the COVID-19 outbreak to negatively impact first quarter results, but did not expect, at this time, the coronavirus to change its full year performance.
“Based on our current expectations, we believe this disruption will negatively impact our unit case volume and financial results for the first quarter of 2020,” the company said. “At this time, we do not expect this disruption to have a significant impact on our full year 2020 unit case volume or financial results.”
Clarification, March 3, 2020: An earlier version of this story listed Diet Coke with Splenda as one of the affected beverages. Splenda-brand sucralose products are made in the USA and not affected by China supply chain issues.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health newsletter for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-03-03--Federal Reserve cuts benchmark rate by half-point

The U.S. Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by half-point, most since 2008, to offset coronavirus impact.
This occurs after seven major economies pledged to use “all appropriate tools” to deal with the spreading coronavirus.
The group of major industrial countries, referred to as the G-7, said Tuesday that it was “ready to take actions, including fiscal measures where appropriate, to aid in the response to the virus and support the economy.”
The joint statement from the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada was issued after an emergency conference call among the finance ministers and central bank presidents, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
The G-7 has issued similar joint statements during periods of extreme market turmoil, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis.
Last week, the Dow plunged 14% from recent highs, its worst week since the 2008 global financial crisis.
“Given the potential impacts of COVID-19 on global growth, we reaffirm our commitment to use all appropriate policy tools to achieve strong, sustainable growth and safeguard against downside risks,” the G-7 said.
Markets had been looking for a strong response that would include coordinated rate cuts by central banks. U.S. markets, which had been gyrating Tuesday. At the opening bell, the Dow slumped almost 300 points.
Global agencies have indicated this week that there will be a significant economic impact as the virus spreads.
On Monday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said that the coronavirus, which was first detected in China but has now spread to 60 nations in Europe, the U.S., Latin America and other parts of Asia, could cause the world economy to shrink this quarter for the first time since the international financial crisis more than a decade ago.
The OECD lowered its forecasts for global growth in 2020 by half a percentage point, to 2.4% — and said the figure could go as low as 1.5% if the outbreak is sustained and widespread. There are signs that the outbreak has begun to ebb in China.
Economists at Capital Economics said Tuesday it was lowering its U.S. GDP forecast to 1.8% this year, down from a previous 2% with an expectation that the Fed will cut rates by one-half percentage-point by mid-year.
In an effort to calm markets that had become turbulent as the virus spread, Powell said Friday that the Fed will “use our tools” to support the economy, a strong signal that the central bank was prepared to resume interest rate cuts if the U.S. economy is threatened by the spread of the virus.
President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of the Fed chairman that he appointed, tweeted again on Tuesday that the Fed was not lowering benchmark interest rates fast enough.
In addition to the negative reaction from global markets, the G-7 statement was also criticized by many economists for the lack of specifics.
Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG in New York, said the G-7 has “nothing but a statement issued with vague promises.” Analysts at High Frequency Economics said the statement was “‘utterly and entirely devoid of action verbs” and offered financial markets ”nothing new.”
Jennifer McKeown, head of global economics at Capital Economics said, “The statement falls short of hopes of a coordinated policy response and raises the risk that central banks will disappoint markets’ expectations in the months ahead.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How psychedelic drugs may revolutionize mental health care
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
—Funding for female founders increased in 2019—but only to 2.7%
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—How to think about COVID-19
Subscribe to Fortune’s Bull Sheet for no-nonsense finance news and analysis daily.


fortune--2020-03-03--U.K. warns companies that 20% of workforce could be out as coronavirus cases rise

British businesses were warned as many as 20% of their workers could be forced to take time off during peak periods of infection if the U.K. is hit by a widespread outbreak of coronavirus.
As the number of confirmed infections in the U.K. rose to 51, the government published its plan for dealing with the disease. It included an estimate that in a worst-case, a fifth of the workforce — more than 6 million people — could be absent.
This would have knock-on effects, as others would be forced to take time off to care for those who are ill, or to look after children if schools are closed. Such a peak period of infection would be likely to last around three weeks, the government said.
“As of 9 a.m. today there were 51 confirmed cases in the U.K,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Parliament on Tuesday. “It’s becoming more likely that we’ll see widespread transmission here in this country.”
The minister was updating members of Parliament after premier Boris Johnson unveiled a package of emergency measures to tackle coronavirus on Tuesday. Johnson said he is ready to close schools and cancel public events, though health officials are uncertain whether either would be necessary.
National Effort
“I fully understand public concern, your concern about the global spread of the virus and it is highly likely we will see a growing number of U.K. cases,” Johnson said in London. The government is preparing for “all eventualities,” he said. “Keeping the country safe is our overriding priority.”
He appeared alongside Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and lead science adviser Patrick Vallance at a news conference to announce steps the government is taking.
The plan, which has been drawn up with devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, sets out measures to slow transmission of the disease.
“This is a national effort. We need everyone to listen to and act on the official medical advice, we need employers to prioritize the welfare of their staff,” Hancock told the House of Commons later on Tuesday.
The government’s current focus is on trying to contain the disease in the U.K. and delay the moment of peak infection until the summer, when the National Health Service is usually less busy than in colder months.
Potential steps in the government action plan include:
Bringing health-care professionals out of retirement to treat the sick
Relaxing rules on class sizes to allow schools to stay open if teachers become ill
Allowing truckers to work longer hours so vital drugs can move around the country
Airlines have to declare their passengers are all healthy before they landing in the U.K.
Emergency laws will be introduced to the House of Commons later this month to give the government powers it says it needs to tackle an outbreak. Ministers plan to fast track the legislation through Parliament so it will be in place before the number of cases peaks.
Army Standby
The army is on standby to backfill roles normally carried out by police, such as guarding sensitive sites and power plants, if officers are needed to maintain public order and make up for shortages in regular policing, Johnson’s office said.
The government is talking to businesses to “ensure they understand what the reasonable worst-case scenario is” so they can make preparations for disruption caused by a widespread outbreak of illness among their employees, the prime minister said.
The Treasury will allow companies more time to settle their tax bills if they have cashflow issues caused by the virus, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak will include financial support for public health efforts in his budget next week. His office is working with the Bank of England to respond to the threat to the U.K. economy from the continued spread of the virus.
“We are taking firm action to support your families, your businesses and the public services on which you rely,” Sunak said in an email. “We are well prepared for this global threat and, as the wider economic picture becomes clearer, we stand ready to announce further support where needed.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health newsletter for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-03-03--The autonomous vehicle war is very much a money war

Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit, has raised its first external round of capital. And it’s quite the round.
The company raked in $2.25 billion in fresh capital from investors including Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Mubadala Investment Company, Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, and Alphabet itself.
This means that Alphabet no longer has full ownership of Waymo, and more importantly, no longer has to shoulder the hefty financial burden alone. According to a report in The Information, Alphabet was spending at least $1 billion per year on Waymo.
Waymo’s not the only one to raise big cash for its autonomous driving dreams. You may remember that last year, Volkswagen agreed to invest approximately $2.6 billion in Ford’s autonomous vehicle partner, Argo AI, in a deal that valued the Pittsburgh-based startup at $7 billion. Soon afterward, China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing also announced that it had spun out its autonomous driving unit into an independent company.
The autonomous vehicle war is very much a money war. The company most willing to spend will be able to outlast any rival not willing to shell out the cash necessary to fund the innovation. Hence the spin-offs. Outside funding can help cut costs for the parent companies while bringing in deep-pocketed partners and forming alliances that will pay off in the (very expensive) future.
Data Sheet’s Adam Lashinsky also had some thoughts on this. Read them here.
PEOPLE MOVES: Cyan Banister is leaving Founders Fund (where she was a partner) to join a firm called Long Journey Ventures. In a blog post, she writes, “[Founders Fund] was always supportive, however they are also stage agnostic and generalists and hoped I would be able to do all stages and I can not. I just can’t.” She will be working on early-stage deals in her new role. (Read Term Sheet’s Q&A with Cyan from 2018.)
Polina Marinova
Twitter: @polina_marinova
Email: polina.marinova@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- GameOn Technology, a San Francisco-based conversational application platform company, raised $10.5 million in funding. Quest Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Mirae Venture Partners and Paxion.
- Sonantic, a London-based provider of expressive and realistic artificial voices, raised €2.3 million ($2.6 million) in funding. EQT Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Entrepreneur First, AME Cloud Ventures, and Horizons Ventures.
- Zapata Computing, a Cambridge, Mass.-based enterprise software company for quantum applications, raised funding of an undisclosed amount from Honeywell Ventures.
- Mize, a Tampa, Fla.-based provider of connected customer experience platform and service lifecycle management software for manufacturers, raised funding of an undisclosed amount from M33 Growth.
HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES
- C16 Biosciences, a Somerville, Mass.-based producer of sustainable alternatives to palm oil using biotechnology, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Waldencast, Future Tech Labs, Y Combinator, DCVC, Sound Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and Liquid 2 Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS
- Francisco Partners agreed to acquire Smith Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of J M Smith Corporation. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Graycliff Partners sold NAL Group, a Buffalo, N.Y.-based provider of last mile logistics and on-premise installation services, to CRST International, Inc. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Argand Partners acquired Midwest Can Company and Container Specialties, Inc. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHER DEALS
- Knowlton Development Corporation acquired Cosmetic Laboratories of America, a Chatsworth, Calif.-based developer of personal care and beauty products. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
IPOs
- GFL Environmental Holdings, an Ontario, Canada-based waste management firm, raised $1.5 billion at the midpoint of an offering of 75 million shares (2% insider sold) priced at $19 apiece, an upsized IPO below its previous $20 to $21 range. The company also raised $775 million through a concurrent offering of 15.5 million tangible equity units priced at $50. The firm posted $3.3 billion in revenue for 2019 and loss of $451.6 million. BC Partners, Ontario Teachers, and GIC back the firm. It plans to list on the NYSE and TSX as “GFL.” Read more.
- Springer Nature, the London-based publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is preparing to list next week in Frankfurt, but may delay plans if the coronavirus continues to impact markets, Reuters reports citing sources. BC Partners and publisher Holtzbrinck back the firm. Read more.
- Imara, a Boston-based biotech developing small molecule therapies for rare genetic disorders, filed for an $86 million IPO. It posted a loss of $23.5 million in 2019. New Enterprise Associates (31.8% pre-offering), Lundbeckfond Invest (16.3%), and Pfizer (11.2%). It plans to trade on the Nasdaq as “IMRA.” Read more.
- Warner Music Group Corp and Cole Haan Inc have sidelined plans to kick off their IPOs early this week due to coronavirus’ impact on markets, Reuters reports citing people familiar with the matter. Read more.
EXITS
- AE Industrial Partners acquired Adcole Maryland Aerospace, a Crofton, Md.-based developer of spacecraft components and small satellites, from Adcole Corporation, a portfolio company of Artemis Capital Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Criteria Corp, a portfolio company of Sumeru Equity Partners, acquired Revelian, an Australia-based in the field of emotional intelligence and game-based assessments. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- RevSpring, a portfolio company of GTCR, acquired Loyale Healthcare, a Lafayette, Calif.-based provider of solutions that develop financial relationships between providers and their patients. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Stone-Goff Partners sold NAS Recruitment Innovation, a Cleveland, Ohio-based marketing agency, - offers human resource marketing, and recruitment advertisement services, to M3 USA. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
FIRMS + FUNDS
- Bregal Sagemount, a New York-based private equity firm, raised $1.5 billion for its third fund, Bregal Sagemount Fund III.


fortune--2020-03-03--India restricts exports of common drugs on fear of coronavirus shortages

India, the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, placed restrictions on the export of some common medicines as concerns grow over shortages of chemical ingredients with many manufacturers in China shut due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The drugs include over-the-counter painkiller and fever reducer paracetamol and finished pills that include it. Similar export restrictions have been placed on the common antibiotic metronidazole, various versions of vitamin B and eight other medicinal chemicals, according to a notice from the Indian government Tuesday.
Though India is the source of about 20% of the world’s generic drug supply, the country is dependent on China for about 66% of the chemical components needed to make them. A recent analysis by the Indian government found that as many as 450 drug ingredients could be impacted by China’s efforts to contain the coronavirus, including a complete lock down of Hubei province, a center of the country’s drug industry.
“I think there will be in the short term or midterm some shortages,” said Jagdish Dore, who runs pharmaceutical-industry consultancy Sidvim LifeSciences in Mumbai. “The whole supply chain will be disrupted, partly from China and partly from India.”
Drugmakers often hold between two and three months’ stock of key ingredients, but with factories in Hubei shut for a sixth week those stocks may be starting to dwindle. Even though the coronavirus outbreak seems to be slowing in China, its continued spread around the world is hampering economic output and trade.
“If there is a potential shortage building up of critical medicines, then there has to be affirmative action taken to ensure that supplies are available to Indian citizens,” said Ranjit Shahani, a former head of Novartis AG’s Indian unit. “If there’s total lockdown in some of the states or areas where these things are made then it’s going to impact the world.”
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—How to think about COVID-19
—Coronavirus spreads to a previously healthy sector: corporate earnings
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—Coronavirus shows why we need vaccines before, not after, an outbreak
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
Subscribe to Fortune’s Brainstorm Health newsletter for daily updates on biopharma and health care.


fortune--2020-03-03--Waymo gets way, way more money for its self-driving car effort

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.
In January, when I interviewed Sundar Pichai, he revealed that “most” of Alphabet’s far-out R&D efforts would seek outside investors. These are the vaunted “other bets” that were the brainchildren of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The presumption was that Pichai, the professional manager the dreamer-billionaires installed to run their empire, would cast a less sentimental eye on the duo’s money-pit projects.
Monday’s news that Waymo has attracted serious money from serious outside investors shows how far along Pichai’s efforts are. Waymo is the self-driving car unit Page and Brin established years before it was obvious that self-driving cars would be a thing or why Google would want to develop them. Today Waymo is widely acknowledged to lead on robotic-car technology in the industry, a source of envy in the automotive world as well as jealousy within Google, which makes oodles of money (Waymo doesn’t).
The company announced it had raised $2.25 billion at an unspecified valuation from investment firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz; sovereign wealth fund and pension funds, respectively, Mubadala Investment and Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board; auto-related entities Magna International and AutoNation; and Alphabet itself.
Three thoughts on this:
Waymo has validated its staying power by raising this money from these investors. It refers to the fundraising round as “an initial close,” meaning more money may be in the offing. It isn’t clear when the business may be able to stand on its own, and it has shared next to no public financial data. But now we know it has provided detailed information to these risk-taking investors, all of whom are playing with other people’s money for a living. This is promising.
Waymo did not announce investments from any of its car-maker partners, each of whom needs to be thinking about how its own self-driving strategies co-exist with Waymo’s. Or don’t.
This is the third “other bet” to win an outside investor. SoftBank invested in balloon Internet company Loon, and Silver Lake and Temasek, another sovereign wealth fund, invested in life-sciences startup Verily. Alphabet also recently said it will ditch its wind-turbine effort, Makani, suggesting that oil company Shell might continue working with it. An incomplete list of other “other bets’ that could be ripe for investment includes Wing, Calico, GV (the artist formerly known as Google Ventures), Google Fiber, Sidewalk Labs, and DeepMind.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Baby, they build you up. Adding one more thought to Adam's essay, don't forget that one of the new investors in Waymo, Canadian auto assembler Magna International, is the same company that built Sony's super-cool Vision-S electric car prototype shown off at CES. Waymo may need some of that kind of outside aid when it comes to manufacturing.
Dead cat bounce. With a chance that the Federal Reserve could lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, stock soared on Monday. Tech stocks which had led the way down last week did better: Intel gained 5%, AMD 4%, and Nvidia rose 2%. Among the FAANG stocks, Facebook gained 2%, Apple shot up 9%, Amazon rose 4%, Netflix 3%, and Google increased 4%. Apple's share price was not harmed by news it will pay small settlements to owners of old iPhones that were slowed when battery troubles occurred.
I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. People who depended on free trading app Robinhood as their broker couldn't get in on the rally, however. The startup's trading platform was offline for all of Monday's session due to a technical glitch.
Canceling plans is OK. More tech events were postponed and cancelled on Monday, but the organizers of SXSW are planning to put on their show starting March 13 in Austin. Still, Facebook and Twitter pulled out of the conference. Meanwhile, Adobe cancelled its annual summit in Las Vegas, Microsoft cancelled its MVP Summit in the Seattle area, and Google dropped its Cloud Next meeting in San Francisco. Speaking of postponed, it now looks like Airbnb's efforts to go public will also fall victim to the virus outbreak.
Mash up classic. In a classic private equity roll-up strategy, BMC Software is buying Compuware, consolidating two leaders in providing software and services for mainframe computers. BMC is owned by private equity firm KKR and Compuware is owned by Thomas Bravo.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
One of the reasons why Apple's stock price has had among the largest up-and-down moves during the coronavirus outbreak is that the company is so dependent on China, both for manufacturing and for consumer demand. On Tuesday, contract manufacturer Foxconn said iPhone factories would be back to normal operations within weeks. Wall Street Journal reporters Yoko Kubota and Tripp Mickle have a deep dive into the company's operations in China and its failure to diversify to factories in other regions.
Finding a comparable amount of unskilled and skilled labor is impossible, said Dan Panzica, a former Foxconn executive. The population in China has allowed suppliers to build factories with a capacity for more than 250,000 people. The number of migrant workers in China, who do much of Apple’s production, exceed Vietnam’s total population of 100 million. India is the closest comparison, but its roads, ports and infrastructure lag far behind those in China.
“You’re not going to be able to have mega-factories anywhere else,” Mr. Panzica said. “You’re going to have to break them up.”
ON THE MOVE
Some various and sundry departures from Apple to report. Nick Forlenza, vp of manufacturing design, retired, and Duco Pasmooij, another vp in operations, is nearing his exit, Bloomberg reports...former Sony television exec Michelle Mendelovitz came to Apple in 2018 to help create shows for Apple TV+. Now she's off to 20th Century Fox Television as senior vice president of drama development...In other streaming news, Netflix hired Josh Simon from Nike as the new head of its consumer products group, running the effort to sell t-shirts and games based on Netflix shows...Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri is stepping down, as the company struggles with transitioning to sell 5G telecom equipment. The new CEO is Pekka Lundmark, former CEO of energy company Fortum.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Twitter and Square are ‘strongly encouraging’ employees to work from home amid coronavirus fears By Danielle Abril
Honeywell sees path to world’s most powerful quantum computer in 3 months By Robert Hackett
NASA hiring new astronauts for the first time in four years By Chris Morris
Too good to be true? Beware of fake online jobs By Anne Fisher
The stock market’s gyrations feel historic. But are they? By Ben Carlson
For a time, Jack Welch was the most valuable CEO on earth By Geoff Colvin
Best earbuds in 2020: Apple AirPods Pro Vs. Sony WF-1000XM3 (video) By Devin Hance
BEFORE YOU GO
Today is Super Tuesday, so don't forget to vote if you're in one of the 14 states holding primaries today. An interesting piece of trivia arose yesterday: Given the ages of all of the remaining candidates, until what year could former candidate Pete Buttigieg run in every presidential election and still be younger than Sanders, Biden, Bloomberg, Warren, and Trump are in 2020? The answer may surprise you. Hopefully, President Pete will have a flying, self-driving car from Waymo by then.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com


fortune--2020-03-03--Rising pollution shows China factories bouncing back from coronavirus outbreak

Satellite data show economic activity in China could be picking up following a steep drop off caused by the coronavirus.
Nitrogen dioxide levels rose across China’s industrial heartland, according to the most recent Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service data compiled by Windy.Com. The reddish-brown gas mainly enters the air from burning fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas. Levels plummeted in February after Chinese authorities locked down communities to contain the virus.
The data confirms anecdotal reports that Chinese workers are slowly heading back to their jobs. The economy was probably running at 60% to 70% capacity last week, according to a Bloomberg Economics report, up from about 50% earlier in February. Government controls and the fear of going outside have curtailed spending and kept factory staff at home. That reduced output and clogged up logistic supply chains.
While pollution in China typically drops early in the year as factories pause for Lunar New Year celebrations, this year’s decline caught scientists off guard because of its severity. Upheaval from the coronavirus is prompting global policy makers to weigh extraordinary economic stimulus.
More must-read stories from Fortune:
—Before coronavirus, there were SARS and MERS. Do epidemics ever really end?
—Coronavirus is giving China cover to expand its surveillance. What happens next?
—The Greek economy is roaring back—which could lead to mass evictions
—10 journalists who deserve justice immediately
—Fortune Explains: Tariffs and trade wars
Catch up with Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily digest on the business of tech.