Infoman

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  Infoman

  Musk Borrowed $1 Billion From SpaceX

  MICAH MAID­EN­BERG AND TIM HIG­GINS

  The Wall Street Journal 06/9/2023 Loan shows how the bil­lion­aire can raise cash with­out hav­ing to sell his shares

  Elon Musk tapped SpaceX, the rocket maker he oversees as chief executive, for a $1 billion loan around the time he was acquiring the social-media company formerly known as Twitter.

  The unusual loan is the latest example of how the world’s richest man has drummed up cash from his empire of companies without having to permanently part with shares—enabling him to raise funds for his wide array of endeavors.

  SpaceX approved the loan, which was backed by some of his SpaceX stock, in October, and Musk drew all of it down the same month, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

  It couldn’t be determined why he took on the debt. He paid the loan back shortly after he borrowed the money, returning $1 billion with interest to SpaceX in November. Musk and SpaceX didn’t respond to requests for comment.

  For years, Musk has had arrangements with banks to borrow against his shares in his companies, including Tesla, the electric-car maker where he is CEO. At privately held SpaceX, the company itself has served as his lender.

  Musk is by far SpaceX’s largest shareholder, controlling a 42% stake and almost 79% of its voting power as of March, according to a SpaceX

  filing with the Federal Communications Commission. If he wants to take out a loan from SpaceX, he almost certainly can.

  The borrowing last year occurred as SpaceX made big investments in its Starship rocket program and in Starlink, a satellite-internet business. The company has raised large sums from investors to help pay for both, and Musk has urged employees to mind their spending. In late 2021, he warned that SpaceX could face bankruptcy as it plowed cash into the huge rocket and Starlink.

  The $1 billion loan temporarily shifted a significant chunk of capital for SpaceX, which is intertwined with many of the most important space missions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon, to its top leader. SpaceX had $4.7 billion in cash and securities on hand at the end of last year, the documents showed. The loan represented 11% of the $9 billion in equity the company reported selling since 2009, according to regulatory filings.

  In November, when Musk paid back the money, he also sold almost $4 billion worth of Tesla stock, and he sold a similar amount the following month, bringing the total amount of the automaker’s stock he sold over a stretch of more than a year to around $39 billion.

  Musk has said he would be paying more than $11 billion in taxes for 2021 and he put up about $25 billion in cash as part of his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter, now known as X, in late October.

  From the early days of SpaceX, Musk has turned to the company to help back up his other ventures. Musk has said he borrowed $20 million from SpaceX years ago to help a then-struggling Tesla, which narrowly averted collapse in late 2008.

  SpaceX tried to help a different Musk company during a period of financial difficulty: SolarCity. In 2015 and 2016, SpaceX invested $330 million in bonds issued by the solar company where Musk was chairman and the largest shareholder. The struggling company later was acquired by Tesla.

  A couple of years later, some SpaceX investors questioned why the rocket maker was diverting resources to another Musk enterprise, the Boring Co., which was experimenting with tunneling at the rocket maker’s complex. SpaceX later said Boring compensated it with some equity in the startup. Musk didn’t comment on the matter.

  Tesla didn’t become consistently profitable until the second half of 2019. The success was further rewarded by Wall Street, fueling the company’s already high market value.

  Still, for many years, Musk has been a cash-poor billionaire with much of his wealth tied up in shares in Tesla, SpaceX and other startups. His liquidity isn’t known.

  As of December 2020, he had accumulated loans from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, totaling more than $500 million tied to his Tesla shares, according to a filing disclosing his relationships with the automaker’s lenders. The current status of those loans couldn’t be learned.

  The mixing of Musk’s personal and business activities dates back to the early days of the companies, when he was writing checks from his own account to cover bills to help a then-struggling Tesla.

  More recently, activities at Tesla have drawn scrutiny, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission opening inquiries into its use of company funds for a project that had been described internally as a house for Musk, the Journal has reported.

  The documents viewed by the Journal show that SpaceX has a loan agreement with Musk that has been modified over the years.

  In early 2017, SpaceX struck an agreement with Musk that permitted him to borrow up to $120 million from the company, with principal and interest due either a decade later or 90 days after a demand from SpaceX. Musk tapped into that deal about a year later, when he took out $100 million, according to the documents.

  The total amount SpaceX could lend him was increased in May 2019, and Musk borrowed another $100 million the same month. A similar scenario played out the following year: The lending capacity was boosted in December 2020 to a maximum of $500 million, and Musk took out another $300 million.

  In 2021, Musk began unlocking some of his paper wealth at Tesla. At the end of that year, he repaid SpaceX the $500 million in borrowing plus interest.

  Last fall, SpaceX boosted borrowing capacity to as much as $1 billion, permitting Musk to take out the loan of that size.

  At the beginning of last year, with Tesla flourishing, Musk began making moves toward a new venture: Twitter.

  An early plan called for Musk to borrow $12.5 billion through loans backed by Tesla shares he owned that at the time were valued at more than $62.5 billion, and represented about 40% of his stake.

  The idea worried some investors. Tesla’s board and several banks had put in place rules that required him to put up more collateral were Tesla’s share price to fall. And it was falling in those days, meaning more shares were needed as collateral. Ultimately, he abandoned using Tesla shares as collateral to buy Twitter.

  In April 2023, Tesla disclosed it had further tightened rules around Musk’s using his stake in the car company to borrow money.

  Paying for the late October acquisition of Twitter further complicated Musk’s financial situation.

  The social-media company traditionally generated most of its revenue by selling ads, but it saw a pullback from advertisers worried in part about the drama around Musk’s takeover. Musk said he was forced to cut spending at the social-media company to avoid bankruptcy.

  The situation at Twitter, along with increased competition and rising interest rates, weighed on Tesla shares last year, when the stock fell 65%. Tesla’s share-price decline complicated Musk’s ability to use stock in the electric-vehicle company to raise money.

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  2023/09/06
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  Infoman

  Spotify’s $1 Billion Podcast Bet Turns Into a Serial Drama

  ANNE STEELE AND SARAH KROUSE

  The Wall Street Journal 06/9/2023 The prospect of riches led to ag­gres­sive in­vest­ments in celebrity deals

  Spotify spent more than $1 billion to build a podcasting empire. It struck splashy deals with Kim Kardashian, the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It paid $286 million for two podcast studios and spent $250,000 and more an episode on exclusive shows to lure new listeners.

  The bet hasn’t paid off.

  Most of its shows aren’t profitable, according to people familiar with the matter, and the company has recently cut staff and programming to slow its losses. The company, which has struggled to report consistent profits, lost €527 million, equivalent to about $565 million, in the six months ending in June, on €6.2 billion in revenue.

  No one in the business is making much money on podcasts, but Spotify, which has spent far more on the medium than its rivals, has more to lose than most. Spotify’s competitors, including Amazon, Apple and Google, tech behemoths with their own audiostreaming services, have other, more profitable businesses.

  Podcast revenue in the U.S. is expected to reach $2.3 billion this year, a 25% increase from 2022, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry group, and is expected to more than double by 2025. That represents a tiny slice of the $200 billion digital-ad market.

  Spotify spent its way to the top of an industry that turned out to be less lucrative than it appeared when it began its podcast quest in 2018.

  “The size of the bet up against the size of the market just seems irrational in retrospect,” Evan Shapiro, a media consultant and producer, said of Spotify’s podcast investment. “They’re out of runway.”

  The pool of podcast listeners is growing, but the flood of shows on various streaming platforms makes it tough to break new hits. Facing competition across genres and formats, Spotify found that exclusive podcasts generally don’t draw subscribers away from its rivals. Podcast costs at the company rose €29 million in the first half of this year.

  The company, which had 220 million paid subscribers to its premium service in June, said it has more than 100 million podcast listeners on its platform, 10 times what it had in 2019. Spotify said it is on track to make its podcast business profitable in 2024.

  Under pressure from investors to meet that profitability goal, the company in June laid off 200 employees, about 2% of its workforce, and culled shows to focus on a more limited stable of original and exclusive content. It did away with its Parcast and Gimlet brands, consolidating its original work into a unit called Spotify Studios. In July, Spotify raised the price of core subscriptions by a dollar to $10.99 a month.

  Spotify has started to share more of the risk with its talent. The company recently agreed to pay comedian Trevor Noah $4 million in a deal that allows the company to collect revenue from the podcast to cover its investment, according to people familiar with the matter. After that, both sides share the take. Spotify intends to pursue similar deals, executives said.

  Sirius, iHeart, NPR and other podcast rivals have gone through their own podcast-related layoffs and budget cuts, part of a larger cost-trimming trend among media and technology companies this year.

  Chief Executive Daniel Ek has said he wants Spotify to be the world’s largest audio company, spanning audiobooks, education, sports and news.

  Podcasts are only the first step toward Spotify’s goal of evolving from a music-streaming company to an audio giant, generating $100 billion in revenue by 2030. Spotify reported €11.7 billion in revenue in 2022.

  While the company probably overpaid for some content, Ek said, the investments helped Spotify achieve its goal of becoming the top podcast platform. The company expects podcast ad revenue to grow 30% this year, ahead of Spotify’s overall revenue growth, executives have told staff in recent months.

  “We’ve been very focused on pursuing shows that drive really loyal audiences and also attract advertisers,” said Sahar Elhabashi, head of Spotify’s podcast business. “We have a very strong portfolio now which does that.”

  Spotify’s library of more than five million shows includes fiction, nonfiction and personality programming. Among its original shows are the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction podcast “Stolen,” as well as “Heavyweight,” which explores people’s regrets and “Serial Killers.” It also carries thousands of podcasts from other publishers and media companies. News Corp’s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a content partnership with Spotify.

  Whether or not Spotify’s investment pays off, it has helped lift podcasting from a medium to an industry, said Donald Albright, co-founder of Tenderfoot TV, the maker of hit podcasts, and a producer of “Kim Kardashian’s The System.”

  By casting as broad a net as possible, Spotify now hopes to capture enough listeners and sell enough ads to make good on its billion-dollar bet.

  Press play

  Spotify in 2018 set its sights on podcasting after executives noticed a spike in demand for audiobooks and podcasts in Germany. Podcasts at the time were a small butgrowing medium that drew young, educated listeners, a demographic appealing to advertisers.

  The company, which began in 2006 as a music-streaming service, believed podcasts could attract more listeners from broadcast radio, then a $14-billion ad market, and help open a path to profitability. First, it had to learn how the business worked.

  Spotify signed exclusive deals with some of the biggest names in podcasting, including Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper. After acquiring Gimlet, it decided to close a profitable unit at the podcast studio— which made custom content for business—and concentrate on creating fiction and nonfiction broadcasts. Creative talent were told to pursue ambitious storytelling without worrying about the cost of their shows.

  Dawn Ostroff, formerly in charge of building Spotify’s podcast business, had talked about needing a “House of Cards,” the critically acclaimed program that established Netflix as a maker of hit shows, former employees said.

  At the time, Gimlet shows typically cost $75,000 to $250,000 an episode, including talent fees; Parcast shows ran $5,000 to $20,000 an episode, people familiar with the matter said. Spotify’s podcast studios sometimes bid against one another for show proposals, former executives said.

  Ostroff signed celebrities to pricey podcasting deals—$20 million or more each for the Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—to mixed results. The Obamas’ production company, which made five podcasts at Spotify, signed a new deal with Amazon’s Audible last year.

  Markle’s only podcast, “Archetypes,” made its debut in August 2022 at the top of Spotify’s podcast charts but failed to sustain a large audience and wasn’t renewed for a second season.

  Global podcast studios head Julie McNamara said the company is seeking partnerships with “strong creators that have something they really want to say and the talent to say it.”

  Podcast studio executives and producers said Spotify’s benchmarks moved around. The company first looked at how many people searched for a particular podcast when they subscribed, trying to assess the biggest draws. Next, it tallied how many users listened to a show each month.

  Later, it looked at the number of listening hours for each show.

  Some company directives seemed at odds. Spotify’s decision to keep many of its original shows exclusive to the platform limited the number of listeners. At the same time, the company was pursuing greater ad revenue—which required larger audience numbers.

  Some Gimlet and Parcast executives said that limiting distribution contradicted the pitch Spotify made when acquiring the companies, that it could expand their audiences. Other executives supported exclusivity, saying it was the best way to build a loyal Spotify listenership.

  Spotify asked podcasters to try live audio with sports-talk app Locker Room, which it acquired in its 2021 purchase of Betty Labs. It added polls, videos and music to some podcast shows.

  The company launched a morning program in late 2020 that sounded like a drive-time radio program called “The Get Up.” The show was a mashup of chatty hosts, news and personalized music streaming. These and other experiments were time-consuming and often short-lived, current and former employees said.

  Investors last year said they wanted to see the company start making money, and Ek told executives to look for ways to trim costs. In June 2022, he announced plans to expand its audio programming and, within a year or two, make Spotify profitable.

  Adding up

  Spotify’s podcast revenue comes from advertising on shows rather than subscriptions on the platform.

  The company has at times struggled to sell ads even for popular podcasts such as “Science Vs,” which discusses fads and pop culture, said people familiar with the matter.

  Spotify’s advertising overall in the most recent quarter made up 13% of revenue, which the company wants to push to 20%.

  Executives have talked about becoming more like YouTube—selling ads to run with creators’ content and sharing the revenue. The company wants more creators to distribute podcasts through Spotify, an avenue to boost its revenue from ads and merchandise sales.

  The company also aims to use listener preferences, based on music choices and listening habits, to target them with ads. Advertisers can now reach particular types of listeners, rather than buying spots on specific shows, through a marketplace called Spotify Audience Network.

  Spotify said it hit a record high of ad impressions sold during the quarter that ended in June from its owned and licensed shows as well as the broader ad network.

  Executives say the company has four years of data that reveal what program formats keep listeners coming back.

  The Ringer, a podcast studio led by Bill Simmons, a star host and head of podcast innovation and monetization, has doubled the number of shows it produces to more than 50 since it was acquired by Spotify in 2020. The programs largely center on conversations instead of more costly, highly produced stories.

  Company leaders have told their staff to be more selective about original shows.

  Executives have said in meetings that deals for new podcasts should consider costs, how quickly a show can gain listeners, its likely audience size, how much the company can charge for ads and opportunities for ancillary revenue, such as merchandise sales and live tours.

  Since moving to wider distribution in March, “Science Vs” listening hours have grown more than 60%, and its audience has doubled. Buzzy topics have helped boost popularity, including episodes on the weight-loss drug Ozempic and whether antiaging face creams are a scam.

  Some laid off employees are trying to land deals to continue producing shows that Spotify canceled. Among the titles Spotify has discussed selling is “Conviction,” which was about to release a new season when it was dropped in June.

  The show’s supervising producer at one point talked with Spotify executives about bringing in a buyer to secure the rights to the program for between $50,000 and $100,000, according to people familiar with the discussions.

  Days later, Spotify set a figure in the $500,000 range.

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  2023/09/06
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  Infoman

  Netflix’s Lessons In Longevity

  JOHN AN­DER­SON Mr. An­der­son is the Jour­nal’s TV critic.

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023

  Ask most people if they want to live to be 100 and the response is likely to be “Sure!” followed by “Wait a sec . . .” Questions suddenly abound: Am I going to be healthy? Am I going to be lonely? Will I be financially stable? Will I have outlived everyone I knew and loved? What author-researcher Dan Buettner set out to demonstrate in “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” is that the solutions to those concerns are also the keys to longevity itself.

  Call it reverse-engineering, which is what Mr. Buettner set out to do in partnership with National Geographic more than 20 years ago by examining the “secrets” of the socalled Blue Zones—areas of the world that are home to an inordinate number of centenarians and a statistically anomalous number of the aged. What is clear early on is that what Mr. Buettner “discovers” during his visits to Sardinia; Singapore; Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; and even Loma Linda, Calif., is largely what we would expect: that much of what helps people live longer isn’t necessarily the purple Japanese sweet potatoes, or going to church every day, or having the limited stress load of a Greek shepherd. It is an Okinawan diet rich in nutrients and fiber, the walking uphill to the Sardinian church, and the community to which one belongs in Loma Linda when one is, for instance, a Seventh Day Adventist who plays pickleball.

  Mr. Buettner is a gracious, charming host, perhaps a bit overly solicitous of the adorable elderly he encounters in some locations, but cognizant that not every “secret” is translatable to Americans, who are his target audience. What works in the city-state of Singapore might not work in a nation of 330 million people. Not everyone has his own house with a garden from which he can gather fresh vegetables for the plant-based diet that Mr. Buettner says has proved essential to long life everywhere; not everyone has a family to take her in when she becomes infirm. As neuro-ophthalmologist and author Mithu Storoni tells Mr. Buettner during his visit to the Greek island of Ikaria, it is a lot easier “to control how you treat your goats so your flock is healthy” than it is to control the anxiety produced by the constant flow of grim information to which many people are exposed on a daily basis. But in a general sense, what anyone can learn from the four-part series is the importance of motion—of one’s body, as a part of a regimen or lifestyle— and the importance of chilling out.

  The origins of the “blue zones,” we are told, go back to the work of longevity researcher Gianni Pes (he appears here), who originally used a blue pen to denote spots on the globe where centenarians thrived, eventually creating small continents of blue ink that suggested something larger was afoot in isolated locales. Mr. Pes initially looked at Sardinia. Was it the altitude of the craggy, mountainous island? Seemingly not, but getting from here to there was routinely aerobic. And despite all the carbohydrates in the Sardinian diet, the consumption of sourdough bread “lowers the glycemic load of an entire meal,” as Mr. Buettner tells us.

  There are many correlating clues to a longer life across the locations in “Live to 100.” Okinawans emphasize the importance of having an

  ikigai, or reason for living; in Costa Rica the same thing is called one’s plan de

  vida. A sense of belonging is critical, as is living with family. On Ikaria, where until 1980 no commercial products were available and everything was produced on-site, islanders consumed a variety of herbal teas produced from the local flora. “What is the best tea to drink,” Mr. Buettner asks the 88-year-old Vaso Parikos. “Wine,” she says, which is a reminder that very few people have ever actually died laughing.

  Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones

  Wednesday, Netflix

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  2023/09/03
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  Infoman

  Swedish Cinema Beyond Bergman

  DAVID MER­MEL­STEIN Mr. Mer­mel­stein, the Jour­nal’s clas­si­cal mu­sic critic, also writes on film.

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023 A new set col­lects four fea­tures by di­rec­tor Bo Wider­berg, who brought an el­e­gant eye to com­plex so­cial is­sues

  For most Americans, Swedish cinema from the late 1950s through the mid-1980s begins and ends with Ingmar Bergman. His revolutionary reorienting of film inward; his success at the Academy Awards, including nine nominations, three best foreign-film wins and one honorary award; the extraordinary troupe of actors he assembled to perform in his movies, many of whom became internationally famous—all this, and more, has made him such a towering figure that seemingly little attention has been left for his Nordic contemporaries.

  Some attempt to correct the record was achieved late last year when Criterion released a set of three films by Mai Zetterling. And now comes another volley, this one devoted to Bo Widerberg, with the same intent: demonstrating that Bergman’s greatness notwithstanding, Swedish cinema in the 1960s was fecund territory where more than one pioneer labored.

  “Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema” contains four features on four Blu-rays from Criterion, variously restored in 4K, 2K and high definition. Widerberg, who died at age 66 in 1997, was a successful author before he turned to filmmaking. His debut, a 30-minute short titled “The Boy and the Kite” (1962), came about in collaboration with another emerging Swedish talent, Jan Troell. Included in this collection as a supplement, it can also be streamed (as can everything in this set) on the Criterion Channel.

  The box opens with Widerberg’s first feature, “The

  Baby Carriage” (1963), shot in luminous black-and-white by Mr. Troell before his own directing career took off three years later. Like all the films gathered here, it is both written and directed by Widerberg and devotes as much focus to complex social issues as it does to the elegant film grammar that characterizes Widerberg’s work— specifically the elliptical narratives, tender characterizations, attention to quotidian pursuits, and subtle, ambiguous conclusions.

  In this one, the beguiling but naïve Britt (an utterly winning Inger Taube) allows herself to fall under the spell of two superficially appealing but woefully immature young men—a vain, would-be rockand-roller (Lars Passgård) and a bright, rich mama’s boy (Tommy Berggren, the protean male lead in three of this collection’s four films). After the former impregnates her, she hopes the latter will rise to her rescue. In the end, she bucks convention and embarks on a path of assured single-motherhood, having wised up just in time.

  Widerberg’s second feature, “Raven’s End” (1963), earned an Oscar nomination as best foreignlanguage film. It’s set in a dreary quarter of Malmö, the director’s hometown, in 1936, with ascendant fascism the background track and Jan Lindeström’s stark blackand-white cinematography further depressing the mood. Mr. Berggren plays the impassioned Anders, an aspiring Theodore Dreiser among family, friends and neighbors offering little encouragement. Yet amid the destitution and emptiness, Widerberg achieves something remarkable, expertly balancing comedy and tragedy. And never more so than in several scenes that transfixingly depict the awkward vulnerability between this determined youth and his alcoholic father (Keve Hjelm in an award-winning portrayal) and disappointed mother (a heartbreaking Emy Storm).

  “Elvira Madigan” (1967) is the set’s best-known film, based on a true story and Widerberg’s first fully color movie—with sumptuous cinematography by Jörgen Persson, who 20 years later would shoot Bille August’s Oscar-winning “Pelle the Conqueror.” But its

  A still from ‘Ådalen 31’; the film depicts labor unrest in a Swedish mill town in 1931.

  overreliance on the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (K. 467) as mood music has long diminished its reputation. Get beyond that, though, and the picture comes alive with its delicately etched rendering of two starcrossed lovers: a Swedish cavalry officer and nobleman (Mr. Berggren again, terrifically sensitive and dashing) and a circus tightrope walker (Pia Degermark in a performance that won her best actress at the Cannes Film Festival). Together, they flee to Denmark after he deserts the army. Two characters more impractical than this pair are hard to imagine, but you really feel for them in Widerberg’s sympathetic telling.

  The most overtly political movie in this quartet, “Ådalen 31” (1969), once more fuses a true story alongside Widerberg’s trademark humanity and fixation with the nominally mundane. Another Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, it depicts life in the mill town of Ådalen in 1931, when labor unrest resulted in the killing of peaceful protesters by the army, ostensibly protecting shuttered factories. But by centering his gaze on a likable working-class family and their far more prosperous but decent neighbors, the film, once more gorgeously shot by Mr. Persson, transcends cant for art—in much the same way John Sayles’s “Matewan” did nearly two decades later.

  Widerberg’s last movie, “Love Lessons” (1995), also earned an Oscar nomination. But despite that and several nominations at Cannes over the years, he and his work remain largely, if unjustly, overlooked in this country. This most welcome set could help change that. Anything less is our loss.

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  2023/09/03
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  Infoman

  Shoppers Are Down on Rounding Up for CharityBY RACHEL WOLFE

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023 As re­tail do­na­tion cam­paigns pro­lif­er­ate, some cus­tomers find them an­noy­ing and say they are less likely to give money at the cash reg­is­ter

  That request to round up your bill at the checkout counter for charity is one of the simplest ways to help nonprofits. But consumers are showing signs of fatigue as these tiny appeals for goodwill multiply.

  Shoppers aren’t worried about spending a dollar on worthy causes like PetSmart’s efforts to help shelter animals find homes or Costco’s campaigns to help sick kids. They’re tired of chain restaurants and retailers asking for money, especially as a broader array of businesses are also asking customers to tip their employees.

  Consumers also complain that they sometimes end up donating more than expected, and that their donations earn tax benefits for companies.

  Vastly more donation campaigns now include a round-up component than they did in 2020, according to a report on charity appeals in the checkout line from social impact organization Engage for Good.

  Shelly Allhands, a Seattle freelance communications professional, says she’s annoyed by businesses with lots of money asking for spare change. The round-up requests remind her of “millionaires who tell us to use paper straws while flying private jets.”

  Chris Perry of Falls Church, Va., has worked in nonprofit fundraising for over a decade. He’s worried about the fatigue he’s hearing from would-be donors, and how people are lumping charity round-ups together with tipping. The philanthropic organizations he’s worked with rely on the campaigns to fund as much as half of their efforts, he says.

  “We’re asking consumers to pay salaries, fix charities, all these things at the same time when they’re maybe struggling, too,” says Perry, citing his work overseeing donations at the Children’s Miracle Network, a collective of nonprofit children’s hospitals. He now does the same for low-income home-repair organization Rebuilding Together.

  Still, he says, “The money that comes in is substantial, and there’s a lot of flexibility in how nonprofits can use it.”

  Round-ups spread

  One reason for the campaigns’ growing popularity: They work.

  Round-up initiatives, now found everywhere from stores to movie theaters and casinos, can raise millions in weeks. Stop & Shop’s campaigns for breast-cancer research and food-security efforts garner between $1 million and $2 million in a month, says Jennifer Barr, who oversees the grocery chain’s charitable giving.

  U.S. companies raised more than $749 million from consumers at checkout in 2022, a 24% increase from 2020, according to Engage for Good.

  Yet people are growing weary of being asked, data shows.

  The number of consumers who said they donated to a charity at the register is down steeply over the past two years, according to a 1,000-person survey by corporatephilanthropy software company Accelerist. It dropped from 80% in 2021 to 59% in 2023.

  About 73% of shoppers said they feel neutral or positive about being asked for a donation at checkout as of this year, according to Accelerist, down from 85% in 2021.

  Perry says he understands consumers’ skepticism. “I wish I could stand there at the checkout on every single one and say, ‘I promise you, this is going to where you think it’s going to,’ ” he says.

  He’s never had a corporate partner donate less than 100% of the money it raises, he says. Most also donate substantial sums—often millions—themselves.

  Bad experiences

  Sometimes people who decide to give a few cents to charity end up donating more than they planned.

  Ashley Mason almost always tapped “yes” on the pin pads’ charity prompts. Then she noticed after multiple visits to Rite Aid within a week that all her receipts were for full dollar amounts, even when she hadn’t opted to round up.

  The clerk told Mason she had enrolled in automatic donations to KidCents, a program run by the Rite Aid Foundation, rather than the one-time donation she had intended.

  “No big deal,” Mason thought— until store employees told her they couldn’t change her selection. After calling the drugstore chain’s corporate office and searching

  Reddit for solutions, she says she gave up and moved her prescriptions to CVS.

  “You know how to get me to enroll and take my money, but you don’t know how to get it to stop,” says Mason, a government contractor in Stevensville, Md.

  A Rite Aid spokeswoman says KidCents donations support children in need. Customers wanting to unenroll can contact Rite Aid’s customercare team at 1-800-RITE AID, she says.

  A federal lawsuit filed last year in New York against CVS alleges the company used customer donations at checkout to fund a $10 million corporate philanthropy pledge to the American Diabetes Association. The complaint was brought by a New York state resident who donated to CVS’s instore campaign.

  A CVS spokesman said the company had filed a motion to dismiss the suit. “Obviously, upon signing, CVS didn’t assume an unconditional $10 million debt to the ADA,” CVS said in its motion. If customer donations don’t meet the $10 million threshold, CVS says it will make up the difference.

  Who gets tax benefits?

  Internal Revenue Service rules generally allow businesses to use consumer donations to earn tax write-offs, though not every company with a checkout campaign uses the tactic. Stop & Shop says it doesn’t earn any tax benefits from customer donations.

  Tax benefits apply to whichever entity makes the direct donation to the qualified public charity, IRS representative Raphael Tulino says. That means customers are eligible only when their pin pad donations go straight to a nonprofit, as is the case with PetSmart’s PetSmart Charities.

  Jesy Herron, who works in development for a Cincinnati video agency, says she appreciated the extra opportunities to give during the pandemic, and didn’t sweat the impact of a few pennies on her taxes.

  After a recent week in which she encountered more than a dozen of the requests, however, she hit a breaking point. She says she feels worse deciding not to donate while her kids are with her.

  “I need them to understand this isn’t mom being a jerk. It’s wanting to decide as a family where we donate rather than have a company decide for us,” she says.

  Instead of rounding up spare change, the family has been assembling grocery bags for local Ukrainian refugee families. She estimates they’ve spent about $750 over the past few months—and loves that she gets to see the delivery trucks drive away.

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  2023/09/03
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  Infoman

  AI Startups Face Big Reality Check As Investors Worry About Profits

  BERBER JIN

  The Wall Street Journal 31/8/2023

  Founders and venture capitalists who flocked to artificial-intelligence startups are learning that turning the chatbot buzz into successful businesses is harder than it seems.

  Almost a year into the boom ignited by the November launch of ChatGPT, some startups that epitomized the zeal for so-called generative AI are now navigating layoffs and reduced user interest. Investors are unsure whether the new crop of AI startups will be able to survive, especially as tech giants such as Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google solidify their dominance over the technology.

  There was optimism in the venture world that commercial AI applications “would materialize at light speed,” said Mark Goldberg, a partner at Index Ventures, a longtime backer of AI startups including Cohere, which is building generative AI models for businesses. Now, “there is a shallow trough of disillusionment,” he said.

  ChatGPT’s release reignited optimism in the startup world after months of industry malaise. Leading voices in Silicon Valley proclaimed that generative AI—the technology underpinning humanlike chatbots— would usher in a new technology era. Venture firms announced splashy new hires and boasted that they were devoting billions of dollars to back the still-unproven sector.

  Goldberg said the initial surge in user growth for ChatGPT—the fastest ever for a consumer app, UBS analysts said in February—led investors to overestimate the rate at which consumers would use tools powered by generative AI. Investors raced to back startups building these products before they had customers or revenue, leading to concern over a potentially overheated market.

  Instead, usage has waned from peak levels. Monthly online visitors to ChatGPT decreased by 10% in both June and July after months of growth, according to data from analytics platform Similarweb. An OpenAI spokeswoman said the Similarweb data didn’t track use of the ChatGPT app, which was launched in May.

  Midjourney, an AI tool that can create images from user descriptions, saw monthly visits decline for three consecutive months ended in July, the data show. Synthesia, a textto-video creator that raised $90 million in June, saw flat or declining website user growth for the past six months.

  Jasper, a generative AI writing tool for writers and businesses, saw declining user growth for four consecutive months ended in July. The company, which raised $125 million last fall, conducted a round of layoffs in July and cut revenue projections for this year, people familiar with the matter said.

  Synthesia Chief Executive Officer Victor Riparbelli said the company recently completed its best-ever month for sales. The chief executives of Midjourney and Jasper didn’t return requests for comment.

  Much excitement for AI remains in the tech industry. Microsoft, Google and other established companies are investing heavily and rolling out new AI products, and business is booming for Nvidia, whose chips are used to train AI models. Startup investors said the technology is still early and could one day mint a new generation of multibillion-dollar startups.

  “We’ve moved from a moment of ‘How big can this be?’ to ‘How do we make it work?’ ” said Sunil Dhaliwal, a general partner at Amplify Partners. Dhaliwal sits on the board of Runway, which builds generative AI tools for content creators, and said about half of his firm’s recent investments have been in AI startups.

  So far, the AI buzz hasn’t been enough to stem a precipitous drop in total startup funding. Overall, U.S. venture funding plummeted by almost half in the second quarter, even as investment in generative AI startups—those focused on systems that produce humanlike text, images, and computer code—increased 65% to $3.3 billion, according to PitchBook data.

  Venture investors said they are still unsure what a winning business model looks like for a startup building new products around the technology. Many young businesses have yet to prove they can retain users and develop products that existing tech companies couldn’t easily mimic.

  Training cutting-edge models can cost companies billions of dollars because of the large volumes of data they need to ingest and analyze. Investors have become hesitant to bankroll such businesses, given the uncertain path to profitability and heavy competition from wellfunded rivals such as Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

  “We cannot sort of unleash AI and have no business model to pay for it,” said Frank Slootman, the chief executive of the data-storage company Snowflake, on an August earnings call. A lot of executives, he said, “have characterized their foray into language models as experimental, exploratory, and they’re sort of trying to get their arms around how big a bread box is this.”

  So far, the largest AI startups have sought much of their funding from tech giants that are able to provide computing power and other resources beneficial to training language models. Microsoft has agreed to invest more than $10 billion in OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Its rival Anthropic, which has released a general-use chatbot, has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in commitment from Google.

  In June, Microsoft and the chip maker Nvidia helped Inflection AI raise $1.3 billion. The startup, co-founded by the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, recently released a personal chatbot.

  One AI startup that helped ignite the AI boom has come under scrutiny.

  In August 2022, Stability AI released a viral text-to-image generator called Stable Diffusion and soon after raised $101 million from venture capitalists. The company held a launch party at San Francisco’s Exploratorium museum last October.

  Emad Mostaque, its chief executive, has since been accused of fraud. Mostaque has denied the allegations.

  In July, Cyrus Hodes, one of Stability’s early co-founders, sued Mostaque and the company, alleging that he sold his shares in Stability for just $100 after Mostaque convinced him the company was essentially worthless. A Stability spokesperson said the suit was without merit.

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  2023/08/31
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  Infoman

  College Characters Hit Weddings

  ME­GAN TAGAMI

  The Wall Street Journal 30/8/2023 Fans pay to have mas­cots at­tend per­sonal events

  Brianna Dial was taking photos with her family after her wedding ceremony in Aloha, Ore., when she spotted a guest she hadn’t previously noticed, or even invited.

  She gasped—and then ran straight into the arms of the guest, “Benny Beaver,” the mascot of Oregon State University.

  “I am not exaggerating, I was more excited to see Benny than I was to do a first look with my husband,” said Dial.

  Most people know mascots as zany costumed characters that dance around college stadiums and whip up the crowd.

  But some fans adore mascots enough to invite them to personal milestone events and pay fees of up to $300 an hour. Dial, 30 years old, later learned her mother-in-law had requested Benny’s presence at the wedding reception as a surprise for the newlyweds, both of whom attended OSU.

  College sports fans are the largest fan base in the U.S., with more avid followers than any professional sport, according to a 2021 report by marketing-research firm Learfield.

  Mascots themselves have become celebrities, with their own fan clubs, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages drawing thousands of supporters. The Mascot Hall of Fame, in Whiting, Ind., celebrates professional and college mascots.

  Stepping into the mascot costume is no small feat, said Joby Giacalone, executive selection committee chairman of the Mascot Hall of Fame, noting the tryout process can be competitive, with students at some colleges vying for a scholarship that comes with the mascot position.

  After the Mascot Hall of Fame releases its list of nominees, the public takes to the polls over a two-week period. This year, the hall collected 95,000 ballots, Giacalone said.

  Syracuse University’s Otto the Orange, a huge, happy citrus fruit with a blue hat, was one of two inductees in the 2023 Mascot Hall of Fame. Otto appeared at 800 on-campus and off-campus events in the 2022-23 school year, 100 more than in 2019, said Julie Walas, coach of Syracuse’s mascot program. “The world of Otto has gotten really big,” she said, adding that the orange has shown up at birthday and graduation parties.

  Ethan Hartz, a recent graduate from the University of Miami, took on the role of Sebastian the Ibis, also known as “America’s favorite bird,” during four years of college. Dressed as Sebastian on game days, he would spell the letoff ters C-A-N-E-S—short for the Miami Hurricanes—with his body as the crowd cheered along. He said demand for Sebastian was so high his senior year that he was booked to appear at a wedding after most every home football game. On those days, Hartz might spend 12 hours suited up in white feathers, a vibrant orange beak and huge sneakers. Once in that bird suit, he had a relentlessly positive persona to uphold and there was no stepping out of character.

  “I’d always walk around with big swinging arms and a skip to my step,” he said, adding that he often powered through one to two-hour events without a break. Sometimes, Hartz added, he would pull out a water bottle and drink through his beak, providing both refreshment for himself and entertainment for the crowd.

  Oscar Dunkle, a senior and former mascot at Bowling Green State University, attended a local block party as Frieda Falcon last summer. The festival had a zip line, and, trying to keep in the spirit of the party, Dunkle climbed into the harness, mascot costume and all. “It was taking a leap of faith, of sorts, the zip line,” Dunkle said.

  Some students behind the mascot costume receive payment for attending off-campus events, while others, classified as athletes or volunteers, don’t. Profits from off-campus appearances can go toward upkeep mascot costumes or sending students to national spirit competitions.

  Colleges often require students playing mascots to remain anonymous by refraining from talking while in costume or taking off their gear in public. Mascots on off-campus side gigs risk further exposure—and have to take extra precautions to stay incognito, says Sawyer Holbrook, a thirdyear student at Bowling Green State, who played Frieda Falcon or Frieda’s sidekick Freddie Falcon. At events, she tried to take breaks in empty restrooms where she could lock the door, take off her mascot head and take a sip of water. But, at one event, a guest unexpectedly entered while Holbrook and a fellow student took a break. Holbrook dashed into the bathroom stall and hid there until the guest left.

  “We’re hiding in the stalls just with our big Converse feet and our bird heads,” Holbrook said. “It was definitely a lot of thinking on your feet.”

  Brendan Healy, a senior at Texas Christian University, who plays the mascot SuperFrog, rushed from the seventh inning of a TCU baseball game to the dance floor of an alumni wedding, never stopping to take his frog costume off. “I’ve only had a few days like that as SuperFrog, but that’s one I’m never going to forget,” Healy said.

  Grace Payne and Paul DeHondt, the TCU alumni who had Healy at their wedding, said SuperFrog’s presence surprised their guests, which included many alums. When the TCU baseball game ended in victory in the middle of her wedding reception, Payne was ecstatic to celebrate the win with her family—and SuperFrog—by her side. “It was definitely the highlight,” Payne said. “Everyone was going crazy.”

  Her guests were thrilled to be in SuperFrog’s presence, she says. The only exceptions, she adds, may have been alumni hailing from the rival schools of University of Texas and Texas A&M University.

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  2023/08/30
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  Infoman

  Loud snoring and feeling tired ‘could mean higher stroke risk

  The Guardian 26/8/2023

  Snoring loudly and feeling tired even after a full night’s sleep could leave people at an increased risk of stroke, a study has shown.

  Hundreds of millions of people have sleep apnoea, a disorder with symptoms including stop-and-start breathing, snorting noises, frequent waking and loud snoring. Many have the condition but are undiagnosed.

  The condition is already known to heighten the risk of serious health problems such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and depression.

  Researchers in the US have now uncovered more evidence about its impact on the heart. Sleep apnoea significantly raises the risk of atrial fibrillation and stroke, they say.

  The findings are being discussed by heart doctors this weekend in Amsterdam at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, the world’s largest heart conference.

  A pair of studies involving experts from Stanford University looked at about 1.7 million people, aged between 20 and 50, over the course of a decade. Those with sleep apnoea were five times more likely to develop atrial fibrillation and 60% more likely to experience a stroke later in life, they found.

  “We found a 60% increased risk of having a stroke if you have sleep apoena,” said Sanjiv Narayan, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford and study author. “Sleep apnoea is really common but we sort of ignore it because we think it’s trivial or just a little bit of a nuisance.

  “Until now no one’s really shown the magnitude of the size of the risk. That’s what really surprised us. And also this is in the relatively young – people that if they had a stroke it would devastate young families. It would destroy their lives.”

  Sleep apnoea happens if your airways become too narrow while you sleep. This stops you from breathing properly. Its causes are not always clear, but it has been linked to factors such as obesity, having a large neck, smoking, drinking alcohol, and sleeping on your back.

  Atrial fibrillation resulting from sleep apnoea causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate.

  “When you are unable to breathe it raises the pressure in the lungs until you ultimately wake up gasping for breath,” said Narayan. “That puts a pressure load on the heart, which causes stretch in the heart chambers, and that could cause the atrial fibrillation.”

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  2023/08/27
• 
  

  Infoman

  Defiant Trump turns historic jail mugshot into fundraising pushDavid Smith Wash­ing­ton

  

  The Guardian 26/8/2023

  堅韌的特朗普將歷史性的監獄預警照片轉化為籌款推動

  大衛·史密斯（華盛頓報導）

  衛報 2023年8月26日

  唐納德·特朗普的競選團隊試圖將他的公眾恥辱轉化為政治武器，昨日通過籌款並創建帶有他怒視的預警照片的商品來實現。

  這張預警照片是美國前總統首次被拍攝的歷史性照片，週四在佐治亞州亞特蘭大破敗的富爾頓縣監獄進行了20分鐘的入獄，他被指控在2020年競選中運作犯罪勾當，試圖推翻該州的選舉結果。這位77歲的前總統被指紋錄入並在監獄記錄中登記為編號P01135809的在押人員，他有著藍色的眼睛和金黃色或草莓色的頭髮。他稱自己身高6英尺3英寸，體重215磅（97.5公斤），比2018年白宮醫生報告的體重少24磅。

  昨天，剩餘的被起訴的共謀者中，包括前司法部官員傑弗裡·克拉克，都在監獄投案自首。有關審判程序的法律糾紛仍在繼續。其中一名共謀者，律師肯尼斯·切斯布羅，獲准要求進行快速審判，日期定在十月。特朗普的律師表示他們不希望快速審判。

  這是特朗普的第四項佐治亞州指控，但第一個產生預警照片的，而預警照片通常與毒販或酒後駕駛者有關。在這張照片中，這位曾一度擁有全球最大權力的人物怒視著鏡頭，身穿慣常的藍色西裝、白色襯衫和紅色領帶。這張照片在全國各地的屏幕上閃現，登上了《紐約時報》、《華盛頓郵報》以及世界各地的報紙頭版。但是，雖然數百萬人看到了正義最終追上不知悔改的陰謀者的象徵，同樣有數百萬人看到了一位被敵人所針對的不可磨滅的烈士形象。

  在支付20萬美元（159,000英鎊）的保釋金後，特朗普迅速尋求利益。他在之前被稱為Twitter的社交媒體平台上發布了預警照片，附上了“選舉干預。永不投降！”的字樣，以及一個指向他的網站的鏈接，該網站鏈接到一個籌款頁面。

  這是他自2021年1月8日以來的第一次發帖，當時Twitter在國會大廈遭受襲擊後暫停了他的帳號。他的帳號於11月恢復，此後不久埃隆·馬斯克收購了該公司，但特朗普仍堅持使用自己的Truth Social平台。他在X上有8660萬粉絲，遠遠超過了2024年競選中的競爭對手，並在他擔任總統期間之前和之後一直使用這個平台作為個人擴音器。但目前尚不清楚這個帖子是一次性的還是其他情況。特朗普在Truth Social上發布了同樣的消息，寫道：“我喜歡Truth Social。這是我的家！！！”

  特朗普2024年的競選活動將預警照片印在了酒瓶、杯子、T恤和其他商品上。一封電子郵件宣傳了一件T恤：“突發新聞：預警照片來了。”郵件寫道：“這張預警照片將永遠載入歷史，成為美國反抗暴政的象徵。”

  考慮到特朗普的競選團隊正在為他在四個司法管轄區內面臨的91項刑事指控花費大量金錢，這張預警照片似乎是一個必要的籌款來源。它還可能成為他努力重奪白宮的集結點，或許是他避免監禁的最佳希望。他的兒子唐納德·特朗普·小特朗普在週三的第一次共和黨辯論後告訴記者：“這將是美國政治歷史上最具標誌性的照片，甚至可能是美國歷史上最具標誌性的照片。”

  當被問及即使特朗普被判刑，他們是否會支持他時，有四名候選人立即舉手，而羅恩·德桑蒂斯和邁克·彭斯兩人搖擺不定，隨後也舉手。克里斯·克里斯蒂做了一個尷尬的手勢，只有阿薩·哈欽森將手放下。

  極右翼的共和黨人加入了煽動性的言論。前阿拉斯加州長、副總統候選人莎拉·佩林告訴右翼的新聞最大化網絡：“那些正在進行這場恥辱，製造這種兩級法律體系的人，我想問他們到底怎麼了，你想讓我們捲入內戰嗎？因為那就是即將發生的。我們不會繼續忍受下去。”

  沒有證據表明喬·拜登或民主黨干涉了導致特朗普被起訴的過程，這些指控將與明年的選舉產生衝突。

  在令人頭暈目眩的另一個星期裡，特朗普的被傳訊正好是在他跳過辯論一天後進行的，他選擇與前福克斯新聞主持人塔克·卡爾森進行了一次採訪，並將其發布在X上。

  當被問及候選人是否會在特朗普即使被判刑後仍支持他時，有四名候選人立即舉手，而羅恩·德桑蒂斯和邁克·彭斯兩人搖擺不定，隨後也舉手。克里斯·克里斯蒂做了一個尷尬的手勢，只有阿薩·哈欽森將手放下。

  極右翼的共和黨人加入了煽動性的言論。前阿拉斯加州長、副總統候選人莎拉·佩林告訴右翼的新聞最大化網絡：“那些正在進行這場恥辱，製造這種兩級法律體系的人，我想問他們到底怎麼了，你想讓我們捲入內戰嗎？因為那就是即將發生的。我們不會繼續忍受下去。”

  Donald Trump’s campaign sought to turn his public disgrace into a political weapon yesterday by raising funds and creating merchandise with his glowering mugshot.

  The mugshot, a historic first for a former US president, was made public after a 20-minute booking at the decrepit Fulton county jail in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, over charges that Trump ran a criminal racket to overturn the 2020 election in the state. The 77-year-old was fingerprinted and listed in jail records as inmate P01135809, with blue eyes and blond or strawberry hair. He gave his height as 6ft 3in and his weight as 215lbs (97.5kg), 24lbs fewer than the White House doctor reported in 2018.

  Yesterday, the remaining indicted co-conspirators, among them the former justice department official Jeffrey Clark, surrendered themselves at the jail. Legal wrangling over procedure to trial continued. One co-conspirator, the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, had his request for a speedy trial granted, a date set in October. Lawyers for Trump said they did not want a quick trial.

  The Georgia indictment was Trump’s fourth but the first to produce a mugshot, a medium often associated with drug dealers or drunken drivers. In the picture, the one-time most powerful man in the world is seen scowling at the camera while wearing his customary blue suit, white shirt and red tie. The image flashed up on screens across the nation and ran on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and newspapers around the world. But while millions saw a symbol of justice finally catching up with an unrepentant plotter, millions saw the indelible image of a martyr targeted by his enemies.

  Released on $200,000 (£159,000) bail, Trump wasted no time in seeking advantage. On X, formerly known as Twitter, he posted the mugshot and the words “Election interference. Never surrender!” with a link to his website, which directs to a fundraising page.

  It was his first post since 8 January 2021, when Twitter suspended his account after the Capitol attack. His account was reinstated in November, shortly after Elon Musk bought the company, but Trump had stuck with his own Truth Social platform. He has 86.6 million followers on X, dwarfing his rivals in the 2024 race, and used the platform as a personal megaphone before and during his presidency. But it remained unclear whether the post was a one-off or not. Trump posted the same message on Truth Social, writing: “I love Truth Social. It is my home!!!”

  Trump’s 2024 campaign plastered the mugshot on flasks, mugs, T-shirts and other merchandise. An email advertised a T-shirt: “Breaking news: The mugshot is here.” It said: “This mugshot will forever go down in history as a symbol of America’s defiance of tyranny.”

  The mugshot appears to be a necessary cash cow, given how much money Trump’s campaign is spending on lawyers as he battles 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions. It could also be a rallying point for his

  effort to win back the White House, perhaps his best hope of avoiding prison. His son Donald Trump Jr told reporters after the first Republican debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday: “It’s going to be the most iconic photo in the history of US politics, if not perhaps the history of the United States.”

  Asked if his father was afraid of going to prison, Trump Jr replied: “We’ve gotten so used to this, we don’t even think about it. We’re joking around because we understand exactly what’s going on and hopefully the American people wake up to exactly what’s going on as well.

  “This is the stuff that the Democrat [sic] party and many in the media actually would be outraged about and are outraged about when it’s happening in Russia. When it happens in the United States, they’re strangely quiet and that’s very telling.”

  Far-right Republicans joined in the incendiary rhetoric. Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee, told the rightwing Newsmax network: “Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this.”

  There is no evidence Joe Biden or the Democrats have interfered in the process that led to Trump’s indictments, which are set to collide with next year’s election.

  In an another headspinning week, Trump’s arraignment came a day after he skipped the debate, choosing instead an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was posted on X.

  When the candidates were asked if they would support Trump even if he had a criminal conviction, four instantly raised their hands and two, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, wavered before following suit. Chris Christie made an awkward gesture and only Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down.

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  2023/08/27
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  Infoman

  Uk Living Cost Issues

  The power of the “cozzie livs”

  The Economist (UK) 26/8/2023 Bri­tons are not all in it to­gether, even if they think they are

  “Cozzie livs”

  FEW PHRASES penetrate the skulls of voters. Sir Keir Starmer’s “sticking plaster politics” has not stuck. David Cameron’s “long-term economic plan” did not last. Use of Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” is well down. One phrase has gone from Westminster wonkspeak to universal refrain: “the cost-of-living crisis”.

  On television, Martin Lewis, a consumer-finance expert, is omnipresent, dishing out “cost-of-living” advice to “This Morning” viewers before rushing to 11 Downing Street to do the same to the chancellor. Across TikTok wildly popular accounts offer moneysaving tips on how to survive the “cozzie livs”. Even the sentencing of Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse serial killer, could hardly dislodge the most-read story on BBC News: a chip shop in Wales was feeding struggling families for £1 ($1.26) a go.

  The “cozzie livs” has gripped British politics to a degree few predicted when the concept emerged late in 2021. Back then, a mooted increase in National Insurance of 1.25 percentage points combined with inflation of 3.2% was enough to trigger handwringing among politicos, worried that the Bank of England would have to lift rates from 0.1%. By 2023, inflation has peaked at 11%, taxation’s share of GDP is on its way to the highest level since the 1940s and the bank has pushed rates to 5.25%, the highest level in 15 years. Real disposable incomes will not recover before 2028, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

  The circumstances are worse than people could have imagined. Yet many are holding up better than anyone could have hoped. While some genuinely struggle, others merely find their “fun money” going less far. When it comes to the cost of living, Britons are not all in it together. Unfortunately for the government, they think they are.

  Nightmare mortgage stories abound as the era of near-zero interest rates fades into memory. Yet unlucky homeowners are far from a majority. Rising mortgage costs affect only a minority of households, shrug government aides. (Outright-owners have outnumbered mortgagees since 2014.) Anyone who bought in the past few years in, say, London will be hammered when they refinance. But many first-time buyers in the capital are well off. Many have a big mortgage because they have a big London salary. Some of the most fiscally fortunate cosplay as the hardest hit.

  For others, rising interest rates are a boon. Almost three-quarters of pensioners own their home without a mortgage. For them, higher interest rates mean little but higher returns on cash savings. Inflation whittles away at their living standards, but the government has upped the state pension to compensate. Public-sector workers have to strike for pay rises that struggle to match inflation. Thanks to the triple lock, pensioners receive an inflationlinked bump automatically. Yet few pensioners accept that they are the lucky ones. There is a cost-of-living crisis, after all.

  Britons are tightening their belts, but in general only by a few notches. Two-thirds of voters say they have cut down on non-essentials, while almost half say they have reduced even essentials. But there is a gap between how people answer surveys and how they behave at the tills. Retail volumes, which adjust for inflation, are down by barely 3% on 2019. Likewise, living standards do not have to fall as prices rise. Some Britons can rely on savings. At 10% of gdp, Britons have more excess savings, built up in the pandemic, than any rich country bar Canada, according to a rough estimate by Deutsche Bank.

  For most people the “cozzie livs” has resulted only in a reduction of fun, rather than a descent into poverty. Thus when help arrived, much of it was spent on pleasure. The Institute for Fiscal Studies examined how poorer Britons spent some of the £70bn (3.5% of gdp) in government support dished out between 2022 and 2023. In the month after cash landed in bank accounts, spending on necessities such as groceries jumped by £20; spending on fun, whether eating out or streaming, rose by £35.

  This poses a problem for the government. People are surviving, but not thriving. For most, the cost-of-living crisis results in tradeoffs, rather than going without. A zippy bmw is replaced by a Fiat 500 when it comes to renewing the car lease. For most Britons, it is not a choice between eating or heating but Marbella versus Margate. Since 2010, when the Conservatives first came to power, a plurality of voters have not had to compromise on their living standards even during the austerity years. Cheap credit plugged a gap left by lousy wage growth. Now voters have to choose.

  Few things bind Britons together more than a sense of shared suffering, even if for some this means no hot tub and for others no hot food. The cost of living has a radically different effect on, say, a family with a £600,000 mortgage on a house in Battersea compared with a family on benefits in Wigan. Yet both families will use it as a reason not to vote Conservative at the next election.

  The personal (finance) is political

  Economically, things are improving. Rupert Harrison, a prospective Tory mp and a government economic adviser, notes that wage increases are already outstripping inflation and will probably do so by a big margin come 2024. The economy will be healthier as the general election nears. It was a combination of rising wages, falling energy prices and belated economic growth that helped David Cameron snatch a slim but consequential majority in 2015.

  Voters are unlikely to be grateful this time. In 2010 they backed the Conservatives knowing that times could be tough. By the election in 2019 the promise was that things would improve. Many have weathered the cost-of-living crisis better than could have been expected. But they are worse off than they thought they would be. This is a chronic problem, not an acute one. Britain was becoming relatively poorer before prices spiralled. Now, people are taking note. The worst of the “cozzie livs” may be over, but the political consequences have just begun.

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  2023/08/27
• 
  

  Infoman

  Travel: The joys of a lifetime of exploring out-of-the-way locations.

  The Wall Street Journal 26/8/2023

  THE SILVER DOMES that dot El Oued’s rooflines shimmered in the spring sun as we wandered the old market at the heart of the oasis city in Algeria’s eastern desert.

  We edged by men in loose robes and women with headscarves, threading our way among stalls piled with vegetables, dates and olives. A spice seller helped Karen pick from his bins of orange, red and green concoctions for a mix to flavor couscous.

  We had anticipated the rush of colors and sounds and people in a city that our guidebook promised was “undoubtedly one of the nicest places to visit in the Sahara.”

  We did not remotely anticipate what would happen that evening, when our day’s wanderings led us onto cushions around a low table, breaking the Ramadan fast with a young imam we’d just met in a mosque.

  El Oued was our last stop in Algeria before crossing overland into Tunisia this year on a monthlong trip to fete our 44th anniversary.

  That was a totally normal way to celebrate—for us. Ever since we honeymooned by hitchhiking around Japan all summer, we’ve been traveling in unusual places or at odd times, often on a shoestring, mostly on

  public transportation and carrying only backpacks. Our travels together to more than three dozen countries have been a continuing source of unexpected delights, intimate glimpses into how other people in the world live, and an abundance of hospitality that renews our faith in humanity. “Welcome” is a familiar greeting from people who approach us on sidewalks and in bus stations to ask where we are from.

  “Welcome to Turkey!”; “Welcome to Nicaragua!”; “Welcome to Tunisia!” “American? Welcome!” Independent travel in offbeat lands certainly has its miserable aspects, whether that be riding on a cramped bus for eight hours through the desert or getting off the train at 3 a.m. in a city and having to walk to a hotel. And no doubt there’s a level of risk as well. But the downsides have never stopped us. Or slowed us, for that matter.

  Friends urged us not to travel to El Salvador in 2007—dangerous, they said—but we went with our three boys and found it hospitable. We took the train above the Arctic Circle in Sweden in late December when the sun never came up. One clincher in our decision to travel in Tunisia in 2018 was that the latest Lonely Planet country guide about it was eight years old.

  “That’s crazy travel!” warned a travel agent in Belize when Steve described our family’s proposed route from Tikal in Guatemala by bus and riverboat to Livingston on the coast, then by sea to Punta Gorda, Belize. The route worked splendidly. Crazy travel. We like the sound of that.

  Our parents’ fault

  We credit our parents for our adventurous-travel penchant. When Karen was 13, her family piled into a red VW microbus and drove for six months from Luxembourg south and around the Mediterranean to North Africa. They camped and stayed with local aid workers. Among their stops in 1970 was El Oued.

  Steve’s parents gave him broad freedom as a teenager to travel in Japan, where they were missionaries. In high school, he rode his motorcycle several days south from home to his Tokyo boarding school in the fall and later learned to hitchhike around the islands when he couldn’t afford gas money.

  Our adventures together began before we were dating, when Steve in 1977 persuaded Karen to hitchhike with him to Iowa from our Indiana college. It was a glorious spring day of blue skies and short waits, including a rare lift from a semi driver. It was a mutual test, we agree now. Steve has kept our cardboard hitching sign from the trip.

  It took another half year for Steve to win Karen’s affection when, on our first date, we rode his candy-gold ’72 Honda CB750 motorcycle on country roads into Michigan for a picnic. That evening in the college auditorium, we watched “Walkabout,” the 1971 adventure-survival film set in Australia and then, well, that’s none of your business.

  In our early married years, we always set aside funds for travel. Our typical routine back then: Buy tickets, buy a guidebook, make no reservations, read the guidebook on the plane, hit the ground and wing it.

  We took our firstborn, Luke, at age 4 months on a tour of Thailand involving trains, boats and a backpack half full of diapers. Restaurant staff would often spirit our baby away to the kitchen to pass around while we enjoyed our meal. When our second son, Isaac, was 5 weeks old, we rode buses around the Yucatan peninsula with him and Luke, then 2½.

  Year-end ritual

  We made travel abroad a yearend ritual with the children, choosing countries almost on a whim. When we were living in Tokyo in 1997—by then we had three boys ages 2 to 9—a fellow travel fanatic told us Vietnam and Laos were a budget backpacker’s delight, so we flew to Ho Chi Minh City, rode trains up the coast to Hanoi and flew into Vientiane. Each boy carried his own backpack.

  In 2000, Steve declared he had waited long enough to visit Nicaragua, where he had planned to spend a college term in 1978 until the brewing revolution intervened. On Christmas morning, we woke to cattle lowing next to our cottage on Ometepe island in Lake Nicaragua, where we had watched the locals celebrate with a Christmas procession and ate a traditional roast chicken stuffed with olives, garlic and squash.

  We then spent Christmas vacations visiting every other country in Central America. On Christmas Eve 2007, we were in the courtyard of a guesthouse in Juayúa, El Salvador, feasting with the owners’ extended family. They later refused to let us pay for the dinner, saying, “You are part of our family.”

  One fall, Isaac demanded: “Why do we always go to hot countries? Can’t we go someplace cold?” So we looked at a globe and homed in on northern Scandinavia. We enjoyed the Christmas markets in Stockholm and then took the sleeper train north to Kiruna during the weeks when the sun never rose above the horizon, sleeping in an ice hotel one night, dogsledding in Abisko National Park and taking the train to Narvik, Norway, before heading south to Oslo. It broke our budget-travel norm but the adventure paid us back.

  We let each son pick our Christmas destination his highschool senior year. Luke chose Japan, where he was born. Isaac opted for Slovakia because his research showed it to be a lowcost country. Levi selected Colombia, as we hadn’t yet been to South America.

  Six-month trek

  We refined our protocol over the years, making firmer plans and more reservations, splurging more often and occasionally hiring travel guides. We traveled hard but added in chill time, for snorkeling, desert camping, skiing or lying on a beach. Steve’s vagabonding alter ego got the better of him in 2011, when he finagled a leave of absence and took our son Levi, then 15, out of high school for a six-month overland trek from Uganda to Istanbul, including Somalia’s Somaliland, Sudan and Iraqi Kurdistan. In Sudan, the two ate goat meat with their fingers, camped by ancient Nubian pyramids north of Khartoum and crossed into Egypt on the weekly ferry, sleeping above deck under a lifeboat. In nearly every town, someone would invite them to tea. “Welcome to Sudan!” was the greeting everywhere.

  Perhaps we’re travel snobs by insisting we’re exploring as much as sightseeing. But as Robert Pirsig writes in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” a fictionalized account of his motorcycle ride with his son across America: “Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.”

  We stuck to our ways when the children were gone, looking for countries that promised adventure for independent travelers. One fall, we took out a map, scanned the Mediterranean coastline and pointed to Tunisia, knowing almost nothing about it. Many foreigners were staying away from the country after a 2015 terrorist attack on tourists, but backpacking travelers online were reporting it was safe, friendly and inexpensive. They were right, we found, as we traveled around easily for two weeks in 2018.

  When Covid halted travel abroad, we hit the road in America, packing our tandem bicycle with camping gear in 2021 and pedaling from our San Francisco home to Virginia, tenting in forests and town parks and sleeping on the floors of churches and fire stations.

  We did it again last year, heading south on the tandem to San Diego and then east to Florida. We didn’t do much sightseeing, but we saw sights of American beauty everywhere and were awed by the hospitality of fellow Americans along the road.

  A disheveled aging man approached us in a rural-Louisiana convenience store, asked about our trip and urged us to be careful. As we were walking out, we looked back to see him with head bowed, hand raised in a blessing and softly asking Jesus to protect us.

  The little store was no sort of destination, but it has stayed with us.

  Back to Algeria

  When Covid receded, we chose a return trip to Algeria as our next trip abroad. We were first lured

  to Algeria in 2019 by traveler chatter online suggesting it offered the charms of Tunisia with even fewer tourists. Promisingly, the newest major Algeria guidebooks we could find in English were the 2008 Bradt guide (the publisher says another edition is in the works) and the 2007 Lonely Planet.

  We reveled in all that Africa’s largest country offers: the green coast and golden Sahara; Roman ruins, labyrinthine old city centers and Parisian avenues; Arab, Berber and French cultures and their food; low prices and good public transportation; few foreign tourists and perhaps the most hospitable people anywhere.

  This year Algiers felt comfortingly familiar. We landed as the sun set and checked in for the night at our colonial-era hotel. It was down a darkened alley on the edge of the Casbah, the maze of narrow roads and walkways that climb the hill from the blocks of French colonial facades that stretch along the Mediterranean waterfront.

  We woke to the cacophony of the market in the alley outside our hotel, and then later walked to Port Said square for espresso and pastries in a sidewalk cafe looking out over the plaza and the sea beyond.

  We left Algiers four days later on the early-morning train east to the city of Béjaïa and then took the bus along the Mediterranean coast to the port city of Annaba, where our room looked out over the tree-lined boulevard. In historic Constantine, we crossed the suspension footbridge over the gorge that splits the city and took a day trip to the ancient Roman city of Timgad.

  We then flew south about 850 miles to the Djanet oasis for a weeklong camping safari deep in the Sahara. Our Tuareg guide Habib became our guru, teaching us that we still had more to learn about travel. “Slowly, slowly,” he would intone as we explored Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, climbing over rocks to see ancient pictographs, stepping over an oasis stream or hiking into a canyon.

  We set up camp each night among dunes or next to cliff walls. After dinner, Habib stoked a fire with a few sticks to heat tea, pouring it between two pots—one held high—until it foamed. “Slowly, slowly,” he would say as we waited.

  It became our mantra the rest of the trip and beyond. Slowly, slowly. Get used to waiting. Don’t rush to the next destination. Have another cup of tea.

  ‘City of 1,000 domes’

  Our last stop in Algeria, El Oued, promised to be a special endnote. Our Bradt guidebook lauded the market as the untouristy highlight of “the city of 1,000 domes.” That appeared to be still true 15 years later, when we arrived after our sleepertrain ride from Algiers. Late in the afternoon, when shopkeepers had closed to prepare to break their Ramadan fast, we walked until we found a mosque with open doors. Karen donned her headscarf, we took off our sandals, and we stepped into the quiet coolness of the main hall, our eyes drawn up into the domed ceiling with its turquoise, brown and white detailing.

  Smiling faces gathered around us. “Welcome,” said a young bearded man in a blue robe. He was an imam at the mosque and in careful English asked about us, talked of the importance of the Ramadan month and then suddenly insisted: “You must eat with me tonight.”

  And so, as the dozens of minarets around El Oued sang out their calls to signal sundown, we found ourselves across a low table from a smiling young imam preparing to break fast with us over tea and dates and then to dine on soup and chicken his mother had prepared.

  “This is it,” Steve whispered to Karen, our code phrase for the transcending moments that happen on almost every trip.

  As the evening progressed, the imam led Steve out to another mosque to observe the hourlong evening prayers, and then to another to sit in a circle with a half-dozen congregants and imams who wanted to discuss the meaning of Islam. The imam’s mother shepherded Karen off to gatherings with tea, sweets and couscous served with the extended family’s women and children.

  It was near midnight when we got back to our hotel, feeling blessed beyond measure. We looked at each other and laughed. We’d just lived an adventure we hadn’t remotely anticipated—precisely the kind we hope for.

  As author Rolf Potts writes in “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel,” his 2002 classic on independent travel: “The secret of adventure, then, is not to carefully seek it out but to travel in such a way that it finds you.”

  Our last evening in El Oued, as we restuffed our backpacks to head toward Tunisia, our young imam—he had begun calling us “Aunt Karen” and “Uncle Steve”—came to see us off, bearing gifts and dinner his mother had made for us. “Don’t forget me,” he said.

  The Yoders write the monthly Retirement Rookies column for the Journal. They live in San Francisco and can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

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  2023/08/26
• 
  

  Infoman

  Instacart files to go public on Nasdaq to try and unfreeze tech IPO market

  PUBLISHED FRI, AUG 25 20232:26 PM EDTUPDATED MOMENTS AGO

  KEY POINTS

  Grocery delivery company Instacart said it plans to go public on the Nasdaq.

  There hasn’t been a notable venture-backed tech IPO in the U.S. since December 2021.

  Gig economy companies have struggled on the public market as profits have been elusive.

  Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of Instacart Inc., speaks during an interview in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, March 3, 2022.

  Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of Instacart Inc., speaks during an interview in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, March 3, 2022.

  David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Instacart, the grocery delivery company that slashed its valuation during last year’s market slide, filed its paperwork to go public on Friday in what’s poised to be the first significant venture-backed tech IPO since December 2021.

  The stock will be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “CART.” In its prospectus, the company said net income totaled $114 million, while revenue in the latest quarter hit $716 million, a 15% increase from the year-ago period. Instacart has now been profitable for five straight quarters, according to the filing. PepsiCo has agreed to purchase $175 million of the company’s stock in a private placement.

  Instacart said it will continue to focus on incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning features into the platform, and that the company expects to “rely on AIML solutions to help drive future growth in our business.” In May, Instacart said it was leaning into the generative AI boom with Ask Instacart, a search tool that aims to answer customers’ grocery shopping questions.

  “We believe the future of grocery won’t be about choosing between shopping online and in-store,” CEO Fidji Simo wrote in the prospectus. “Most of us are going to do both. So we want to create a truly omni-channel experience that brings the best of the online shopping experience to physical stores, and vice versa.”

  Instacart will try and crack open the IPO market, which has been mostly closed since late 2021. In December of that year, software vendor HashiCorp and Samsara , which develops cloud technology for industrial companies, went public, but there haven’t been any notable venture-backed tech IPOs since. Chip designer Arm, which is owned by Japan’s SoftBank, filed for a Nasdaq listing on Monday.

  Founded in 2012 and initially incorporated as Maplebear Inc., Instacart will join a crop of so-called gig economy companies on the public market, following the debut in 2020 of Airbnb and DoorDash and car-sharing companies Uber and Lyft a year earlier. They’ve not been a great bet for investors, as only Airbnb is currently trading above its IPO price.

  Instacart shoppers and drivers deliver goods in over 5,500 cities from more than 40,000 grocers and other stores, according to its website. The business took off during the covid pandemic as consumers avoided public places. But profitability has always been a major challenge, as it is across much of the gig economy, because of high costs associated with paying all those contractors.

  In March of last year, Instacart slashed its valuation to $24 billion from $39 billion as public stocks sank. The valuation reportedly fell by another 50% by late 2022. Instacart listed Amazon, Target, Walmart and DoorDash among its competitors.

  Headcount peaked in the second quarter of 2022, Instacart said, “and declined over the next two quarters, reducing our fixed operating cost base.” At the end of June, the company had 3,486 full-time employees.

  The biggest area for cost reductions has been in general and administrative expenses. Those costs shrank to $51 million in the latest quarter from $77 million a year earlier and a peak of $102 million in the final period of 2021. Instacart said the drop was the “result of lower fees related to legal matters and settlements.”

  Simo took over as Instacart’s CEO in August 2021 and became chair of the company’s board in July 2022. She was previously head of Facebook’s app at Meta and reported directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Apoorva Mehta, Instacart’s founder and executive chairman, plans to transition off the board after the company’s public market debut, according to a 2022 release.

  The company’s board also includes Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy, Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman and Andreessen Horowitz’s Jeff Jordan.

  Instacart will be one of the first independent grocery delivery companies to go public. Amazon Fresh, Walmart Grocery and Google Express are all units of large corporations. Shipt was acquired by Target in 2017 and Fresh Direct, another direct-to-consumer grocery delivery company, was bought by global food retailer Ahold Delhaize in 2021.

  Sequoia Capital and DJ Capital Partners are the only shareholders owning at least 5% of the stock. Instacart said those two firms, along with Norges Bank Investment Management and entities affiliated with Technology Crossover Ventures, D1 Capital Partners and Valiant Capital Management, have “indicated an interest, severally and not jointly” in purchasing up to $400 million of shares in the IPO at the offering price.

  Instacart’s move into AI has come largely through a string of acquisitions in the past two years. Those deals include the purchase of e-commerce startup Rosie, AI-powered pricing firm Eversight, AI shopping cart and checkout solutions provider Caper, and FoodStorm, a software startup specializing in self-serve kiosks for in-store customers.

  WATCH: Instacart files for IPO

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  2023/08/25
• 
  

  Infoman

  Mr Pratrick :

  https://youtu.be/uu4uOFWfkbE

  2023/08/24
• 
  

  Infoman

  【評論特譯 / 整死香港 就能整死中國經濟放多元的科技和創新，為何能在中國發展？中國找出獨特的模式嗎？

  一如他以往的立場，黃亞生重申否定這個說法，他在文章說，西方需要法治、自由市場等來發展經濟，中國只是把這些元素外判——主要利用香港。他認為北京已把香港的一國兩制扼殺，中國將重蹈蘇聯的覆轍，空有發明，卻沒有創新，發展陷入停滯，北京將會感受到其香港政策的影響，屆時將會後悔莫及。

  因此我在這裏的標題變成「整死香港 就能整死中國經濟」。

  黃亞生這篇文章是建基於他近日推出的新書 The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline （簡單來說就是他在sell書）。

  我沒有閱讀過這本書籍，純粹根據出售的簡介，以及黃亞生接受訪問時的說法，他在書中探討整個中國歷史如何大一統和多元之間尋找平衡。他認為，國土面積大，有其好處，但不能忽略如此廣泛面積下的人民會十分多元，以科技為例，科研需要國家支持，但如果政府的意識太強，壓倒其他想法，社會思想單一，便不能令科技有更大的發展。

  黃亞生說，在中國歷史上的繁榮時期，例如唐朝和後改革開放時期的中共統治，能在大一統與多元作出平衡，因此經濟高速發展。他又認為，隋朝開創出來的科舉令中國統一全國思想，因此更有效長期統治如此廣闊的面積，但代價是大部份時間缺乏創新。

  以下是文章原文的翻譯：

  麻省理工科學歷史學家Loren Graham在他的著作 In Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? 中展示出，蘇聯及之後的俄羅斯在很多科技中是先驅，包括各式武器、改善鐵路的技術和激光，但未能令其經濟顯著受益，這個徹底失敗的原因是俄羅斯缺乏企業家精神。

  同樣的洞見可適用於帝國中國。很多源於中國的理念只是孤獨的孤兒，為中國經濟帶來極少甚至沒有裨益。相反，在1978年改革開放後，中國朝着跟俄羅斯和之前中國不同的方向進發，當改革植根開花，中國開始發展出龐大、充滿活力的私人企業領域，誕生很多企業家，他們很有動力、也很有能力發揮科技的好處。

  中國的意念和創新不再孤獨，有很多同伴了。對中國經濟來說，更重要的是，這些意念和創新不斷推動經濟增長，創造就業，並帶來稅收，協助中共穩住政權。

  帝國中國具有創造能力，但不能創新。正如已故美國經濟學者 William Baumol 指出，這個分別是很關鍵的。空有發明創造，並不能貢獻經濟增長，增長是靠創新推動的，這是指企業家精神和商業發展活動，透過商業化把發明帶動市場。資本主義是創新的機器，因為它提供了機制，讓發明變成可提振經濟的創新。

  在改革開放年代下的中共，中國變成這種創新機器。不過，中國高科技產業生機蓬勃，依然令很多人莫名其妙。

  兩名記者Dan Senor 和 Saul Singer在2009年出版的暢銷書籍 Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle，他們揭示出，以色列成為全球的企業家成功故事，源自不拘泥繁文縟節的文化、沒有風險的探索和有組織的平等主義，這些東西全部都要靠政府政策和計劃支持。書籍提出一些生動的例子，詳細說明下級如何反駁上司，即是在跟階級制度是同義詞的軍隊也如是。

  相反，中國是由上而下，層級分明，而且高壓，窒礙個人倡議，似乎缺乏了以色列的民主文化、法治和財產權利保障，中國的法例對中國領導人沒有有意義的限制，中國金融由國有銀行體系主導，雖然風投基金在本世紀頭20年幾何級數增長，但阿里巴巴、華為、聯想等大型科企在初創階段時，並非由中國的創投給予資金。

  因此，中國完全是以色列的相反，但中國依然能夠成為創業之國。中國的企業家精神繁盛起來，即使沒有法治和市場為本的金融，甚至很多人假設，專制是跟創新對立。

  可以如何解釋這個結果呢？

  「中國難題」<<< 評論員和學者有一個根深柢固的想法，認為中國發現和締造了「第三條道路」，促進具活力的創新，這個發展模式同時具備市場經濟的效率以及國家的能量，但毋須依賴資本主義的必要體制元素，例如法治和市場金融。

  我不同意這個看法。在我的新書 The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline，我展示出，香港在背後為中國很多高科技創業家提供了法治和市場金融的功能——至少直至近期為止。

  雖然中國大陸沒有法治和市場金融，但實際上當鄧小平繼承毛澤東，揭開改革開放年代時，中國把這些功能外判給香港。看看全球電腦巨擘聯想的歷史，這間公司以中國科學院計算技術研究所的名義於1984年成立，1993年起在香港註冊，遷來香港對公司初期發展扮演了必要的角色。

  能夠利用香港的金融服務，這是聯想崛起的里程碑。聯想從研究所取得第一筆資金後，大部份之後的融資都是來自香港的常規西式資本市場，包括在初創階段，以及之後一路發展時的多輪融資。

  1988年，聯想從香港公司「中國技術投資貿易」取得90萬港元的註冊資本，在香港投資一間聯營公司，之後在1994年於香港上市，籌得公司在中國投資所需要的資金。當中不見中國國家資金的蹤影。

  香港在1994年仍是英國殖民地，在1997至2019年以一國兩制的形式運作，雖然香港在中國主權之下，但保留了法律和運作自主性，維持歷史上放任經濟和市場為本的金融制度、法治、以及財產權保障。中國不能提供以上任何核心功能，但開放改革年代的政府讓部份中國企業家可以獲得這些東西。

  可以享受這些提高增長的體制因素，是鄧小平推出開放政策時沒有提及，也相信他自己也沒有想過會有這種效應。改革開放有巨大成就，不只因為允許外國企業在中國設立工廠，還因為把中國企業家跟全球風投資金聯繫起來，容許部份中國公民和企業走出去，中國一些能幹的企業家獲准離開一個很差劣的制度。大家必須搞清楚這一點：中國成功，不是因為中國自己創造了有效率的體制，更多在於提供了國民可享用有效率體制的機會，而這些體制不在大陸。

  外判法治<<< 一些人相信中國企業家可以在國家主義的神奇方式下興盛起來，這些人忽略了香港（以及其他海外註冊地）的角色，這些地方提供了推動創新的傳統支柱。要意識到這一點，只要想像一下，假如中國擁有相同的國有銀行系統，以及相同的科技和企業人文資本，但門口沒有香港，聯想的發跡史就不會出現。

  因此，中國高科技企業把資產註冊在中國法律制度以外的地方，十分普遍。BAT（百度、阿里、騰訊）中，只有騰訊在中國註冊（深圳）。（順帶一提：騰訊早年獲南非媒體公司 Naspers 支持）阿里方面，有登記顯示它在開曼群島註冊，也有登記顯示它的中國業務以一間香港公司與一間大陸公司1999年成立一間聯營而運作，很大機會是開曼的公司透過香港的控股公司運作其中國業務。

  同樣，百度在英屬處女島註冊，其中國業務公司2000年成立，是一個全資擁有的外國公司，法律架構跟聯想北京和聯想上海一樣。中國最大型臉部辨識技術公司商湯（已被美國列入黑名單），以及TikTok母公司字節跳動，同樣都在香港註冊，中國第二大電商京東在開曼群島註冊。

  記者 Mara Hvistendahl 2018年年底提及，世界20大科技公司中，9間是中國，而當中只有3間是完全在大陸註冊，分別是騰訊、小米和螞蟻集團（但螞蟻的母公司也是外國註冊），另外6間的註冊都是香港或其他海外領土，包括阿里、字節跳動、百度、滴滴出行、美團和京東。

  再度孤獨<<< 當然，中國高科技企業家還得益於其他因素，例如中國有數以百萬計受過優良訓練的IT人員，提供了規模優勢，而且GDP高速上升帶來增長機遇，但香港及海外領土提供安全港，令他們取得法治，十分關鍵。全球化有一點很受忽略，全球化不只為中國帶來外國市場，還給予有利的體制條件和環球風險資本，我們需要認識到這些體制因素的影響，才能說出正確的中國故事。

  當意識到這一點，便會發現所謂中國可以不要有效率的市場為主體制，這個看法並不準確。聯想的故事正正顯示體制的重要，聯想能夠享用這些體制，因為中國意外地、幸運地跟世界上其中一個最放任經濟的地方毗鄰，中國特別，不是因為中國解開國家資本主義的密碼，而是因為中國的制度有一個安全閥。

  這是要說出正確的中國故事的另一個原因，其他國家如果想照抄中國的金融和法律制度，認為這樣可促進企業家精神，將是大錯特錯。聯想及其他中國高科技公司十分成功，但有關香港的特殊情況顯示，中國科企的模式不能廣泛應用在其他地方。

  不幸地，很多評論員和中國官

  2

  香港獨立五訴實現 • 7h 不幸地，很多評論員和中國官員自己都似乎未有掌握到這一點。倫敦政治經濟學院（LSE）的經濟學教授金刻羽在她的新書中表示，中國的發展模式獨特，「超越了社會主義和資本主義」，令中國毋須西方的法治和市場融資也能締造出增長奇跡。中國企業家在改革開放只是避開中國的中央集權，她卻錯誤地把這一點當作中國制度本身的優點。這本新書正值中國出現大規模走資時推出，中國企業家害怕個人和財產安全而調撥資金。新書出版的時機如此不合時宜，令人咋舌。

  同樣地，康奈爾大學經濟學教授Eswar Prasad在2019年香港反送中示威期間，為《紐約時報》撰寫評論，指出香港對中國不再重要，因為中國經濟規模遠超香港，香港在1997年時相當於中國GDP的五分之一，2018年跌至十三分之一。

  我不妨列出另一些不同的統計。我在書中描述了3間中國重要生物科技公司，分別是百濟神州、 藥明康德和再鼎醫藥，3間公司都在香港註冊，一如很多其他中國高科技公司。想像一下：如果有人說美國憲法沒有用，因為憲法對GDP是零貢獻？這個立論很有問題，一如Prasad的看法，也反映出很多中國觀察家低估了法治和市場金融的重要。

  北京的官員這樣想香港嗎？應該是。2020年的國安法已經淘空了香港的一國兩制，這個制度曾為中國企業家提供類似法律保障的東西，現在北京官員恐怕已後悔莫及。

  香港從法治被拖進中國式的以法而治（rule by law），而且在地緣政治緊張、去全球化和經濟越趨孤立的大環境下發生。新的安全避風港已經冒起，例如新加坡，但這些地方只接收了中國的經濟難民，不能扮演以往為中國企業家提供動力的體制功能。中國很快就會感受到，當不能把法治等推動創新增長的基本元素時，會有什麼影響，中國將會為嚴重錯誤理解基本經濟學而付上沉重代價。

  2023/08/20
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  Infoman

  Title: To Protect Pristine Land and Unleash the Economy, Scrap England's Green Belt

  Key Points:

  Green Belt's Growth and Significance: The green belt, conceived 70 years ago, encircles English cities, currently making up 12.6% of England's land. The green belt's primary goal was to curb urban sprawl and protect natural beauty. Another 25% of land is safeguarded by national parks and similar designations. The belt's expansion continues, growing by 24,000 hectares (1.5%) last year. Positive Effects and Public Perception: The green belt has effectively limited urban sprawl; just 9% of the country is developed. Popular imagery links it to William Blake's "green and pleasant land" ideal. It's credited for preventing cities from sprawling and driving investments into cities. The policy's popularity remains high. Contradictions and Current Issues: The green belt is not as "green" as it sounds, with 7% being built-up land. Little open space is available for recreation; two-thirds of it is used for farming. England's undeveloped land suitable for housing or infrastructure is increasingly scarce. This contributes to housing shortages in productive cities like London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Negative Impact on Economy and Environment: Urban "leapfrogging" occurs due to green belt restrictions, creating housing scarcity in cities. Scattered urban development leads to less agglomeration and a congested labor market. Lack of public transport causes increased car usage, leading to higher emissions. These issues collectively cost around 0.5% of England's GDP annually. Proposed Solutions: Ideal solution: Replace the green belt with more designated national parks and protected areas. Allow development on green-belt land within 800 meters of railway stations, potentially yielding 850,000 homes. Relinquishing just 10% of the green belt could provide land for 5 million homes. Bold step: Plan new towns similar to Milton Keynes and Welwyn Garden City. Political Stances and Potential Reforms: Conservatives favor building on brownfield sites in cities and tightening green belt restrictions. Labour Party acknowledges the need for change and criticizes the current lack of housing supply. The Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, aims to address green belt issues to strengthen the economy. Future Implications: The green belt's impact on the economy and housing shortage might become an election topic. Conservatives remain cautious about radical reform due to past difficulties. Labour Party's willingness to address the issue offers potential for reform if they come into power. In conclusion, the green belt's original intention to preserve green spaces has led to unintended consequences, including housing shortages and economic inefficiencies. While the political landscape might be hesitant to enact radical changes, there's increasing recognition that addressing the green belt issue could enhance the economy and housing accessibility

  2023/08/19