WSJ [paywall – alternative free source] – “At Best Buy, returning too many items within a short time can hurt a person’s score, as can returning high-theft items such as digital cameras. Every time shoppers returns purchases to Best Buy, they are tracked by a company which has the power to override the store’s touted… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Economy
SIPRI Top 100 Arms-Producing and Military Services Companies 2020
SPIRI Fact Sheet, December 21, 2021: “The combined arms sales of the world’s largest arms-producing and military services companies (the SIPRI Top 100) were $531 billion in 2020 This represents an increase of 1.3 per cent on their arms sales in 2019. Despite this being the smallest increase in arms sales among the Top 100… Continue Reading
Welcome to Covid-19’s “junior year.” It’s not pretty.
Vox: “After a brief reprieve from surging cases in the fall, omicron, the newest and most transmissible Covid-19 variant yet, is tearing its way across the nation, causing a nearly 30 percent spike nationally in cases in a matter of days. As communities roll out eerily familiar safety measures, for some, it’s feeling like 2020… Continue Reading
3 hot-button employment litigation areas for 2022
HRDrive: “Those who were hoping for a respite from emerging legal risks following nearly two years of a pandemic are not likely to get it anytime soon, according to a group of Blank Rome attorneys who spoke during a Dec. 7 webinar. In fact, the post-pandemic workplace environment is likely to present unique factual circumstances,… Continue Reading
The Future State of Our Scholarly Publishing Vendors
The Scholarly Kitchen – Angela Cochran: “Last week, David Crotty wrote about “Market Consolidation and the Demise of the Independently Publishing Research Society” in which he described the quickly converging landscape of society publishers. These societies are not merging together, per se, but rather merging with a very small group of commercial publishers. David argues… Continue Reading
The problem with ESG investing, in one chart
Quartz: “Investors poured more than $120 billion this year into exchange-traded funds marketed as comprising companies with strong environmental, social, and governance (ESG) track records. That’s double last year’s level, and total investment in ESG ETFs could reach $1 trillion by 2025, according to Bloomberg, making them one of the hottest investment products on the… Continue Reading
The World’s Most Profitable Traffic Jam
“Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Or just read on…Today’s issue is on an unusual type of story – it’s about how politics can work to fix a major social problem. Ten days ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill… Continue Reading
Global Foresight 2022
“Welcome to the inaugural edition of a new annual report from the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, home for the last decade to one of the world’s premier strategic foresight shops. In this year’s installment, which is part of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series, Mathew Burrows and Anca Agachi identify ten… Continue Reading
PL Henderson explores how cycling has helped women’s emancipation.
Resurgence.org: “Cycling is booming, in a revolution activated as a social side effect of the global pandemic. A pedal-powered response to the events of 2020 saw sales of bikes in the UK rise by 60% at the beginning of the first lockdown. Meanwhile, in Europe, in order to cater for the increased bicycle use, millions… Continue Reading
The ‘most serious’ security breach ever is unfolding right now. Here’s what you need to know.
Washington Post: “Much of the Internet, from Amazon’s cloud to connected TVs, is riddled with the log4j vulnerability, and has been for years…The fact that log4j is such a ubiquitous piece of software is what makes this such a big deal. Imagine if a common type of lock used by millions of people to keep… Continue Reading
5 tech trends that will impact businesses well beyond 2022
Tech Republic: “Understanding the impact of technology on businesses and society at large is hard. This year’s annual Thoughtworks Looking Glass report attempts to put a broad range of technologies into perspective so business leaders can get an idea of where tech is taking them. The report takes a holistic approach to analyzing the impact… Continue Reading
Scientists Are Racing to Gauge the Threat of Omicron
The New York Times – “Even as scientists race to understand more about the Omicron variant and the threat it poses, one fact is abundantly clear: It spreads quickly everywhere it lands. In South Africa, Omicron spread twice as fast as the highly infectious Delta variant. In Britain, officials have estimated that 200,000 people are… Continue Reading
