5 minutes estimated reading time
Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta. She has roughly 1.6 billion reasons never to work again – that isn’t lives ruined by Facebook, but her net worth on leaving Meta after 21 years at Google and Facebook building advertising sales operations teams.
Sandberg’s resignation has been a long time coming, and was repeatedly predicted since the early 2010s when the toxic nature of Facebook’s ad model became apparent. You had the sense that she viewed herself as a presidential candidate in waiting. Her exhortations to lean in were at odds with the ‘tech bro’ culture that still permeates Meta and other Silicon Valley firms. Sandberg leaves Meta with her reputation in tatters and with less chance of becoming president than More on Sheryl Sandberg leaving Meta here: Sheryl Sandberg calls it quits – by Casey Newton & Axios Login: Sandberg’s ad jackpot
Consumer behaviour
The Subversive Economy of the Lagos Danfo | The Republic
Hong Kong
Number of Hongkongers applying for BN(O) scheme rises 25 per cent in first quarter of 2022, likely from families applying before new school year | South China Morning Post – Some 123,400 Hongkongers have applied for pathway to British citizenship since January 31 last year, with 92 per cent of them successful. Canada, Australia have offered alternative routes, but immigration experts say BN(O) and Canadian programmes will remain most popular. – A few observations on this. There has been a strong historic connection between Hong Kong and Vancouver going back to at least the 1967 riots. The South China Morning Post used to have a Vancouver column until April this year. Prominent people like Li Ka-shing had their families there. There is a similar connection with the UK, though I found that I was running into more Canadians than British born Chinese during my time in Hong Kong. Secondly, the dominance of mainland Chinese in creating a threatening atmosphere for Hongkongers in Australia is a big issue
Ideas
Should Cities Disband their Police Departments? – ScienceDirect – the short answer social science data research says no they shouldn’t. The long answer. Unlike the UK, in the US large towns can have their own police forces. There are then county sheriffs departments and state police as well. Closing a ‘city police department just means less responsive policing with less crime solved, less transparent data indicating the quality of policing going on. Crime still happens.
Cultural Transmission In the Internet Age
On the Russian Oil Sanctions – by Matthew C. Klein
Innovation
Science is getting harder – by Matt Clancy
Japan
Fixing Japan’s broken corporate culture – by Noah Smith
Luxury
FT’s How To Spend It magazine rebrands as big spenders go out of style | Financial Times | The Guardian – The How To Spend It name was created in 1967, when the FT’s first female employee suggested the wives of its readers might enjoy a section on how to spend their husband’s income. It later became a standalone magazine, riding the luxury goods – and financial services boom – of the 1990s and 2000s. Alice Pickthall, of Enders Analysis, told a 2018 Guardian long read that the magazine was best understood as the “Argos catalogue for rich people” – my issue with HTSI has been less about nice things and more about the lack of quality many of the items have in terms of design, build quality and longevity
Marketing
How the 968CS rebuilt the Porsche powerhouse | Financial Times – ‘You don’t understand: if we don’t get a car at under £29,000 then we’re dead’,” says Gaskell, now 63, a multiple non-executive director, investor and speaker – and a transatlantic rowing record-holder too. He got together with some colleagues to work out how to get a 968 priced at £28,995. “Out went air conditioning, electric windows, rear seat, rear wiper, boot lock – and the big electric driver and passenger seats were replaced with lighter ones.” They got it down to £28,975, then realised they had another problem: “Buyers wouldn’t like saying they’d bought a cheap Porsche.” The solution was to position it as a “lightweight” road-racer. “We lowered the suspension, quietly had a special steering wheel made for us by Italian manufacturer Momo – the factory would have gone nuts if they’d known – and called it the ‘Club Sport’. A couple of professional drivers reported that it was a fantastic driver’s car. We’d accidentally created a game-changer, and in 1993 it was named ‘Performance Car of the Year’.” – interesting tale about innovating in adversity. There are a some bits missing however. Porsche had form making lightweight cars like this, notably the Porsche 911 Club Sport from 1987. So there was a ready use case, concept and language that could be adapted for the cheap 968 rather than a completely new creation as implied by this article.
Media
Amazon to close China Kindle Store after losing out to domestic rivals | Financial Times – Amazon will leave behind a growing customer base of digital book lovers. More than 500mn Chinese listened to or read books on a digital device in 2021, according to research by the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association. China’s digital reading market generated more than Rmb40bn ($6bn) of sales last year, an increase of more than 18 per cent from 2020 – back when I started going to China there was a substantial trade in purchasing Kindle tablets from the US and Japan. For regulatory reasons Amazon China has been slow to get into e-books. So local competitors fuelled a parallel trade in Kindles. These tablets were then refreshed and pointed to local e-book stores. It must be galling to Amazon to know that not only did they lose out on e-tailing in China, but the subsidised Kindles from other markets built China’s rivals in e-book sales.
Online
China Tops Google, YouTube Results on Covid Origins and Beijing’s Human-Rights Record – WSJ
Web of no web
The full saga of Apple’s troubled mixed reality headset has been revealed | Ars Technica