This week’s highlights: Cheaper healthcare, Brands strike back, and the importance of body language.
Fifteen on Friday – 08/11/17 – Issue 248
Food for Thought:
- NYT – On Health Care, Who Needs Congress? Regardless of whether Congress enacts health care reform, the private sector isn’t waiting.
- WashPo – Rise of the machines – Credit DH – Robots are increasingly being deployed to fill jobs for which there aren’t enough qualified applicants.
- GuardianUK – How the middle class hoards wealth and opportunity for itself. This is thought provoking – “American society is dominated by an elite 20% that ruthlessly protects its own interests”
- Medium – I stopped checking Facebook for a year, without deleting the app. Here’s what I learned. The habit to break isn’t Facebook, but something else.
- USA Today – I invested early in Google and Facebook. Now they terrify me. – Credit JC – ‘Brain hacking’ Internet monopolies menace public health, democracy, writes Roger McNamee
Business/Economics:
- NYT – Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows 46 new coin offerings have been announced and an additional 204 are moving toward fund-raising, according to data from Tokendata.io.
- Bloomberg – Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions. Life expectancy gains have stalled. The grim silver lining? Lower pension costs
- NYT – The Potential and Peril of Giving a Brand a Human Face
- WSJ – Brands Strike Back: Seven Strategies to Loosen Amazon’s Grip. Some give local stores first dibs on new products; others seek to enforce minimum advertised prices.
- Engadget – All Apple had to do to sell iPads was make them cheaper. It turns out Apple’s customers just wanted a plain old iPad for not a lot of cash.
Culture/Tech/Science:
- NYT – He Can Hit a Golf Ball 445 Yards. Can He Become a Golfer? For long-drive champion Jamie Sadlowski, turning lightning-strike drives into consistent birdies is the key to earning a spot on the PGA Tour.
- WSJ – The Men Who Trade ISIS Loot. The middlemen who buy and sell antiquities looted by Islamic State from Syria and Iraq explain how the smuggling supply chain works.
- TED Talks – This is What Happens When You Reply to Spam Email.
- CNET – Firefox Fights Back. Inside Mozilla, CEO Chris Beard and his team are preparing to outmaneuver Google’s Chrome browser. The battle begins in November, with their release of Firefox 57.
- BI – Body language is more important than you think — and it can even outweigh your IQ