Brigadoon Daily

Your daily dose of the emerging issues + independent thinkers shaping commerce + culture

December 3, 2021

“Virtual People”

TOP FIVE

1. Angela Merkel: How will the world remember her?

2. Pence 2024?

3. Up all night with a Twitch millionaire

4. Stanford launches first class taught completely in VR

5. Mexican national team unveils a new logo

GLOBALIZATION + STATECRAFT

The FT’s 25 most influential women of 2021
FT

Busting the Merkel myth: Europe’s celebrated ‘leader of the free world’ dealt with most problems by sweeping them under the rug.
Politico

Angela Merkel: How will the world remember her? As her tenure as German leader comes to an end, DW's correspondents around the world have been asking people for their thoughts on the outgoing chancellor. What do they think of her politics, and what do they believe her legacy will be?
DW

Reuters: Blinken confronts Russia's Lavrov on Ukraine, warns of 'severe costs'

WP: Top US, Russian diplomats trade blame in talks over Ukraine

A tabloid ‘Game of Thrones’ in London could tilt UK politics: The top editor is out at The Daily Mail, widely viewed as the voice of middle-class voters, and the paper’s coverage of Boris Johnson’s government might be softened because of it.
NYT

How UK trade went woke: Trade agreements are no longer simply about imports and exports.
Politico

Brexit fears hold back US-UK trade deal: Washington is concerned that London’s threats to override Northern Ireland protocol will undermine peace in the region.
FT

Fears of Brexit hold-up over UK-US steel spat: Top UK trade minister will hold talks on the row in Washington next week.
Politico

Macron says Brexit rules matter of ‘war and peace’ for Ireland amid UK spats: Politico reports the French president calls on UK to work with the EU, ‘be it on fishing, be it on the Northern Irish Protocol, be it on migratory topics.’

Macron privately called Boris Johnson a ‘clown’, says French magazine: Guardian reports this follows French president’s complaint about PM’s behavior after they discussed sinking of a refugee boat in the Channel.

Hard-right French MP tops Les Républicains party’s presidential primary: Guardian reports Éric Ciotti wants referendum ‘to stop mass immigration’ and set up ‘a French Guantánamo bay.’

France: The battle over wind power stirs up the election: Heavy investment in wind farms is vital to meeting net-zero goals but the sector is becoming a contentious political issue.
FT

China says it is more democratic than America: Western dysfunction tempts the Communist Party to make risky boasts.
Economist

‘Where is **?’: Fans in China elude censors to talk about Peng Shuai: She is not the first celebrity to be scrubbed from the internet, but her supporters are finding creative ways to voice their frustration.
NYT

Why Peng Shuai has China’s leaders spooked
Leta Hong Fincher

Facing Olympic boycott calls, China presses US companies to speak up in its defense
WP

Axios: Mitt Romney calls Ray Dalio's China investments a "sad moral lapse"

AP: US defense chief slams China’s drive for hypersonic weapons

Reuters: US in hypersonic weapon 'arms race' with China - Air Force secretary

How the Marines could fight China: A new US Marine Corps document — “A Concept for Stand-in Forces” — details how the service and others could fend off Chinese aggression. Read the report - click here.

Bloomberg: SEC moves a step closer to delisting Chinese companies in the US

+ SEC announces final rule requiring firms to open their books

+ Agency outlines criteria for delisting foreign companies

China fights a financial fraud explosion: Tens of thousands are falling victim to fraud despite government attempts to combat the scammers.
FT

How Bayes’ theorem helped win the second world war: Introduction to Bayesian statistics and how it cracked the Japanese naval cipher JN 25.
Sebastian Dick

COVID

NYT: Biden vows to fight Omicron with ‘science and speed, not chaos and confusion.’

WP: ‘Nothing is off the table,’ White House says as omicron detected in third US state

Bloomberg: NY hospitals fill as state sees most COVID cases since January

+ Britons are set to be offered a fourth coronavirus vaccine dose and potentially further boosters over 2022 and 2023.

Why you shouldn’t always ‘follow the science’
Rory Sutherland

POLITICS + CAMPAIGNS

WP: Symone Sanders, senior adviser to Vice President Harris, will leave post

Symone Sanders to leave the VP’s office: Politico reports the departure, which is set for the end of the month, is the second major exit from Harris’ office in the last few weeks.

Rivals or not, Harris and Buttigieg take a road trip
LAT

Rivals in waiting: Harris and Buttigieg eye top job as Biden’s star wanes: The Democrats are in disarray as doubts grow over the 79-year-old president’s willingness to see out his term.
Hugh Tomlinson

Pence 2024? If Donald Trump officially enters the next presidential race, that doesn’t mean his former vice president will stay out of the contest.
Peter Nicholas

+ “Just shut up — that’s all he has to do.” -- Rep. Don Young (R-AK), quoted by the Washington Post, on Donald Trump.

Trump intervenes in Ohio Senate primary — for himself: The former president was upset about ads in the race featuring anti-Trump comments a candidate made in 2016.
Politico

A CIA report shows Trump abandoned his duty as Commander in Chief: The agency had to trick Trump into paying attention to intelligence.
Mother Jones

+ “Gentlemen. You can't fight here. This is the war room!” -- President Merkin Muffley (Dr. Strangelove)

A pollster’s warning to Democrats: ‘We have a problem’: Focus groups with Virginia voters led to a bluntly worded memo on what Democrats need to do going into the midterms.
NYT

+ Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is joining the advisory board at the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.

+ Timothy Geithner, former Obama Treasury secretary and a Warburg Pincus executive, will join fellow former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as co-chair of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group beginning in January.

DISRUPTION + INNOVATION

Why raw materials could impact speed of energy transition: Public debates about the EU's dependence on oil and gas imports are mounting. But Europe might soon find itself in an even weaker position in a field crucial for the energy transition: critical raw materials.
DW

COMMERCE

Trapped in Ikea: A snowstorm in Denmark forces dozens to bed down in store: Guardian reports six customers and about two dozen staff spent the night in the bed department after a foot of snow fell.

Products that are over 100 years old:

Heinz Ketchup
Pepsi
Oreo Cookies
Crayola Crayons
Campbell's Soup
Vaseline Petroleum Jelly
Jell-O
Dr. Pepper

NYT: Square, Jack Dorsey’s payments company, changes its name to Block.

Here’s how Google’s experimental 3D telepresence booth works: An 8K screen, four GPUs, four microphones, and a whole bunch of cameras.
The Verge

Up all night with a Twitch millionaire: The loneliness and rage of the Internet’s new rock stars: Ten hours a day, streamers are broadcasting lives of obsession and wealth for an unforgiving crowd. How long can any of them last?
WP

How an Excel TikToker manifested her way to making six figures a day: Taking an unconventional route to a conventional business.
The Verge

Every company may soon be a cloud company: Wider adoption of internet services should prompt more businesses to examine the very nature of what they do.
Richard Waters

A car a minute used to flow through here, but chaos now reigns: A shipping terminal in Kansas reveals the fundamental problem — no one can plan, and no one is sure what will happen next.
NYT

How China's car batteries conquered the world: Beijing’s calculated approach to manufacturing electric-vehicle power packs has the US, the European Union, and other rivals playing catch-up in the race to lead the electric future.
Anjani Trivedi

50: The people and ideas that defined global business in 2021
Bloomberg

MARKETING + COMMUNICATIONS

Dentsu reveals a ‘New Worlds Order’ in 2022 creative trends report
IBB

SPACE + SCIENCE

The US Space Force wants to clean up junk in orbit: Debris from a Russian anti-satellite weapons test adds new urgency to international and government efforts to get rid of high-flying trash.
Wired

PERFORMANCE

The most important decision in life: The best economics class I ever took in college was called Market Design. The class was about all the markets that do not involve an explicit exchange of money. Most markets we participate in are not like this.
Nick Maggiulli

CULTURE

AP: NBR Awards name 'Licorice Pizza' its best film of 2021

Stanford launches first class taught completely in virtual reality: Communication professor Jeremy Bailenson has formatted his class COMM 166/266: “Virtual People” to take place in virtual reality (VR) after 20 years of teaching the subject and seeing the technology develop. It is the first class set entirely in VR in Stanford’s history.
Stanford Daily

Stanford course allows students to learn about virtual reality while fully immersed in VR environments: The innovative classroom experience lets students directly experience the wide-ranging possibilities of virtual reality as a cutting-edge medium.
Stanford News

“Who the fuck cares about Adam McKay?” (We do, and with good reason): The Don’t Look Up director weighs in on everything under the sun, from his comedy roots to his breakup with Will Ferrell to the sun itself. If only we’d let him write his own lede.
Vanity Fair

Director Adam McKay explains how his Lakers project led to a split with Will Ferrell
LAT

Lorne Michaels still lives for Saturday night: The showbiz impresario steers SNL toward the half-century mark.
WP

SPORT

Nav Bhatia’s journey to become the Raptors’ superfan after immigrating to Canada revealed in CBC documentary: “Superfan: The Nav Bhatia Story” offers an in-depth portrait of the 69-year-old by getting him to open up about the racism he faced after immigrating to Canada, his arranged marriage and even how he got those plum seats in the first place.
Toronto Star

Superfan: The Nav Bhatia Story: Nav Bhatia has attended almost every single Toronto Raptors home game since the team's first season in 1995. This is the story of how he became one of the world's most famous basketball fans.
Trailer

Stephen Curry’s scientific quest for the perfect shot: The NBA’s best shooter decided the basket was too big. He used technology to make it smaller. The goal: ‘swishes within swishes.’
WSJ

Mexican national team unveils a new logo for uniforms ahead of 2022 FIFA World Cup: The new logo was unveiled following a two-year initiative to modernize the team's image.
CBS

AFP: Ronaldo begins Man Utd revival with 800th career goal

Why nobody should want to play for New York: It’s a hell of a sports town, but there are better places to join a team.
Will Leitch