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Good morning and welcome to Wednesday.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.85 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: +3.30 minutes.)
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
"The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves."
–Amelia Earhart (b. 1897)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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👋🇨🇳 Yahoo Says Goodbye to China
 Image: Giphy
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🎁 Yahoo officially pulled its services from China on Monday, ending an almost two-decade, sometimes-controversial relationship with the country.
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In 2007, the company was criticized by U.S. lawmakers after it handed over data on two Chinese dissidents to the authorities, eventually leading to their imprisonment.
💬 What they’re saying… “In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” per a statement from the company. It also said it “remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet.”
🚗 Driving the move: Yahoo was already blocked in China (just like Facebook & Google) and had wound down most of its services, but the country’s Personal Information Protection Law went into effect on Monday.
Designed as a Chinese data-protection law, it introduces a range of regulations about how data can be collected and stored, threatening fines of up to 5% of annual revenue.
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It’s not totally dissimilar from GDPR in Europe or other privacy-focused laws, but China’s political environment is a little… different…. and demands strict censorship requirements.
🧳 Zoom out: International investors have lost more than $1 trillion this year as a result of China’s changing regulations – think crackdowns on video games, celebrity culture, financial services, tutoring, etc. – and
companies are increasingly saying “hasta la vista, baby.”
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Epic Games announced yesterday that Fortnite will no longer be available in China after November 15.
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LinkedIn announced last month that it was shutting down operations in China, citing similar reasons to Yahoo.
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🏈 Rams’ Relocation Saga Continues
 Image: Tenor
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🎁 Yesterday, a Missouri court of appeals denied a bid from the NFL and LA Rams owner Stan Kroenke to move the team’s upcoming relocation trial out of St. Louis, its former city.
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The defendants – the NFL, Kroenke, and the 31 other teams/owners – were seeking to move the proceedings to another city because of what they called "prejudicial pretrial publicity" in St. Louis.
📜 Background… After the Rams left for LA in 2016, the city of St. Louis filed a lawsuit claiming Kroenke and the NFL violated the league’s relocation policy, which requires owners to engage in “good faith” efforts to remain in their current market.
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St. Louis also alleged it was misled into spending time and public money developing a new stadium when Kroenke and league officials had already decided to leave (despite telling officials they would stay).
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The city is seeking what could amount to more than $1 billion in damages, which includes the $550 million relocation fee the Rams paid out to the other 31 NFL teams.
The NFL and Kroenke have fully rejected the allegations, which they portray as factually untrue and distorted readings of legal agreements.
💬 What they’re saying… “It could wipe out a minimum of half of Stan Kroenke's net worth. No lawsuit like this has ever gone to a jury in the 40 years of the NFL's relocation policy from when it was originally crafted in 1984," said attorney and sports legal analyst Daniel Wallach.
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While we’re on the topic of Kroenke’s net worth: An ESPN report claims he “stunned” other NFL owners last week after telling them he plans to renege on a promise to cover tens of millions of dollars in legal fees related to the Rams’ relocation.
📅 Blast from the past… Last year, a federal judge dismissed an antitrust suit filed against the NFL by the city of Oakland after the Raiders relocated to Las Vegas.
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It unsuccessfully claimed the NFL and its teams act like a “cartel” that bullies local governments into paying unreasonably high costs for sports stadiums that would never occur in a truly competitive market.
👁️ Looking ahead… The NFL and Kroenke could still petition the Missouri Supreme Court to try to move the lawsuit elsewhere. The trial is set to begin in mid-January unless a settlement is reached beforehand.
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If successful, the suit could act as a blueprint for local governments to seek compensation should a major pro sports team relocate.
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🍩 DONUT Holes…
 Image: McDonald’s
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☝️ McDonald’s released a McRib NFT.
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📚 The DOJ is suing publisher Penguin Random House in a bid to stop its acquisition of Simon & Schuster.
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❌ Meta (this will take some getting used to) plans to end its facial recognition program and delete the facial recognition templates of one billion users.
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💉 The CDC unanimously endorsed the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for use in children aged 5 through 11 in the United States yesterday; the final step prior to rollout is approval from the agency’s director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
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⚾️ The Atlanta Braves defeated the Houston Astros in the World Series, the team's fourth title overall and first since 1995; Jorge Soler was named Series MVP.
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🏘️ Zillow is shutting down Zillow Offers, its iBuying division, citing an inability to accurately forecast home prices; the company's stock dropped more than 10%. (As we covered yesterday, most of the homes the company bought are now worth less than what they paid for 'em.)
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🗳️ Election Results: In the VA governor race, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe, 50.7% to 48.6%. Most of the other races were too tight to call by our publishing deadline – check out the preliminary results.
+More: A U.S. nuclear sub struck an "uncharted underwater mountain" in October, according to a Navy investigation.
+Bonus: Quentin Tarantino will auction off seven never-before-seen "Pulp Fiction" clips as NFTs.
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🔥 The Hot Corner
💬 Heard Through the Grapevine… Will Ferrell turned down $29 million to film an Elf sequel. For context, the entire budget of the original movie was $33 million.
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"I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good. I just couldn’t turn down that much money,’" the actor told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie.’"
🔢 Stat of the Day: The record for most expensive home ever sold in California has been broken for the second straight year. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga purchased a 13-structure compound in Malibu for $177 million, surpassing the previous record set by Jeff Bezos ($165 million).
📖 Worth a Read… The economics of pumpkin patches.
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
🚔 Police Reform Across America
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 Image: Matt Rourke/AP
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🎁 Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (D) is expected to sign a pair of bills into law later today banning police traffic stops for minor infractions.
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Philly’s new Driving Equality Act divides traffic violations into two categories: 1) “primary” and 2) “secondary” violations.
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Police officers are not allowed to pull drivers over for “secondary” violations, including things like a single broken light, operating a car without an official certificate of inspection, or having a license plate that isn’t “securely fastened.”
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Traffic stops are still permitted for “primary” violations posing an imminent public safety risk.
🚗 Driving the move... Philadelphia’s City Council said the bill “seeks to address the tension between police and community members by removing negative interaction through minor traffic stops… that promote discrimination.”
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Black drivers accounted for 72% of the nearly 310,000 traffic stops by police officers between October 2018 and September 2019, per City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, the bill’s sponsor. That’s despite the fact that Black residents make up 42% of the city’s population.
🗳️🇺🇸 Zoom out: Five cities across the country voted on police reform ballot measures on Election Day yesterday: Austin, Albany, Denver, Minneapolis, and Cleveland
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Of those, Minneapolis is the only one considering a total overhaul of its police structure, while the other cities are proposing more incremental changes like reforming police oversight and training.
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Ballot proposal No. 2 asks voters whether Minneapolis should replace its police department with a new Department of Public Safety that would take a “comprehensive public health approach” that “could include” police officers.
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📺 TikTok is Better Than Reels – and Instagram Knows It
 Image: Haulix Daily
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🎁 An internal Meta study of Instagram Reels and TikTok users from April 2021 stated, "TikTok is more appealing than Reels due to better relevance and deeper engagement experience."
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Even more damning: "Most participants preferred TikTok compared to Reels at the end of the study, even if they started as Reels users.”
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A copy of the study was included in disclosures made to the SEC, and a redacted version was provided to Congress and a consortium of news organizations.
🤔 What’s going on ?... In short, TikTok was more relatable, funny, and its creators seemingly more authentic. The app also did a better job than Instagram at serving up engaging content and tapping into "the person's whole identity, not just one aspect of it."
📱 Zoom out: Starting in 2018, Instagram earmarked almost its entire global annual marketing budget to target teenagers. The reason ? “If we lose the teen foothold in the U.S. we lose the pipeline,” read a strategy memo from last October laying out a marketing plan for 2021.
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A Piper Sandler survey from earlier this year showed Snapchat (35%) and TikTok (30%) outpacing Instagram (22%) as the favorite social media platform for teens.
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📣🗣💬 This Week's Poll Question
📜 Background: Last week, we covered what it would take for COVID-19 to transition from a pandemic to an endemic disease, meaning its impact is considered “manageable.”
🤔 Our question: When do you think the pandemic will be “over” ?
The pandemic is already “over”
Sometime next year
Sometime in 2023
In 2024 or later
+Note: Results and the most thoughtful responses will be featured in tomorrow’s newsletter.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🌮🌌 Tacos… In Space
 Images: Megan McArthur via Twitter
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🎁 Astronauts aboard the ISS enjoyed a taco feast this week after harvesting chile peppers that had been growing onboard the station since July.
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NASA said growing the chile peppers was "one of the most complex plant experiments to date on station because of the long germination and growing times."
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The space agency has already successfully grown lettuce, kale, and Chinese cabbage in orbit.
👁️ Looking ahead… This experiment is just one of the ways NASA is looking to keep astronaut food interesting as it plans future manned missions to the moon and Mars.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
🏃♂️Lean On Me...
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 Images: WFMZ
“On your mark, get set, go!”
When two high school runners heard those words at the start of their cross country race last week, they were each determined to beat their own personal bests.
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Senior Brandon Schutt realized quickly that he wouldn’t meet the necessary time to qualify for state finals; instead of pushing himself, he took it slow to enjoy the race.
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Meanwhile, sophomore Blake Cerveny forced his body to work a little too hard, collapsing from muscle fatigue only 100 meters from the finish line.
🤲 A helping hand… Seeing his opponent struggling to get back up, Brandon sacrificed his own time in the race to help Blake to his feet and support him through to the end.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
🇺🇸 Succession
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Who became President after JFK was assasinated ?
A) Richard Nixon
B) Gerald Ford
C) Harry Truman
D) Lyndon B. Johnson
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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D) Lyndon B. Johnson
After succeeding JFK in 1963, LBJ won the presidential election the following year with 61% of the vote and had the largest popular margin in American history at the time (nearly 16 million votes).
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