Brigadoon Daily | September 26

1. Iran’s women are desperate and furious. They won’t take it any more: Uprising is in motion after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for wearing her headscarf in an ‘improper’ manner. It’s a battle the country’s women have been fighting for more than 40 years. The Times

2. Chief metaverse officers are getting million-dollar paydays. So what do they do all day? Disney, P&G, LVMH, and other big names have invested in chief metaverse officers to plot a course through the next chapter of the internet. Do companies really need them? Bloomberg

3. Brazil’s election and the search for an economic revival: Ahead of October’s vote, Brazilians must decide between the free-market Bolsonaro administration and the more interventionist Lula. FT

4. Pharoah Sanders walked among us: The jazz icon’s music embodied a search for something greater. Maybe it’s closer than we think. WP

5. How Angel City FC created a women’s soccer moneymaker: The National Women’s Soccer League franchise is wrapping its first season by blowing past its financial goals. WSJ

#BrigadoonDaily

#Brigadoon | Global Street Smarts

Sound More Interesting at Cocktails Memo | September 23, 2022

25 talking points for better conversation at cocktails based on what I found interesting this week.

Global Street Smarts

1. Westminster Abbey has been the site of royal coronations since William the Conqueror in 1066.

2. Scotland's mood: A survey by the think tank British Future this summer indicated that 45 percent of Scots want to keep the monarchy, and the latest polling suggests that 46 percent want to leave the Union.

3. The FTSE MIB index, Italy's flagship stock market index, has fallen roughly 20 percent this year.

4. The International Space Station has been the trailblazer, the greatest global collaboration in the history of technology. During 22 years of continuous habitation, it has hosted 258 astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries and thousands of groundbreaking experiments.

5. Modern slavery: An estimated 50 million people worldwide in 2021 were living in modern slavery conditions, with 3.3 million being children.

6. The world's average adult will be worth $100,000 by 2024, says Credit Suisse.

7. CGI: The Clinton Global Initiative returned to New York City this week after a six-year hiatus.

8. Generation X + Millennials, who are now middle-aged or approaching it, have maintained or even expanded their identification as political independents in recent decades, according to Gallup.

9. LinkedIn started in 2003.

10. Losing sleep over notifications: A new study by De Montfort University Leicester in the UK suggests that 12.5% of 10-year-olds lose about one night of sleep per week because they wake up in the middle of the night to check notifications.

11. Apple plans to create more kinds of ad inventory in the App Store by the end of the year.

12. 70%: Percentage of Roblox played on mobile devices.

13. Air Canada bought 30 short-haul electric planes.

14. Hertz plans to order up to 175,000 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and BrightDrop EVs from GM over the next five years.

15. Peloton has officially unveiled its new rowing machine: Peloton Row. It costs $3,195.

16. When Patagonia surpassed $1 billion in annual sales, its founder, Yvon Chouinard, described it as the worst day of his life.

17. Among the Fortune Global 500, 63% of companies have now set 2050 targets for emissions reductions, up 12 percentage points in the last year, and 47% have set more ambitious 2030 targets.

18 . Volkswagen says the chip shortage will last past 2023.

19. QOTW: "Property development and investment is really about people and possibilities, more than it's about physical buildings." -- Carlo Navato

20. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has pushed its 2023 opening by two years due to supply chain issues.

21. La Liga recently raised Barcelona's spending limit by $803 million.

22. The F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix is set for November 18, 2023.

23. Royal football: In 1957, Queen Elizabeth II attended a college football game between Maryland and North Carolina.

24. Scrum: The US will host the men's Rugby World Cup in 2031.

25. The San Diego Wave broke a National Women's Soccer League attendance record last Saturday night, with more than 32,000 attending a match against Angel City.

-Marc

Pro-tip: The picture is of the lobby bar at Fasano Hotel in São Paulo.

Mackinac Island’s beloved Brigadoon is back from the ashes after devastating fire

Back in my salad days, I worked one summer on Mackinac Island.

I passed this cottage many times and was enamored.

Also, it was the first time I had encountered the word "Brigadoon."

As I researched the name, the meaning, and the history, I became even more enamored. Brigadoon.

A place that is idyllic, unaffected by time, or remote from reality.

Amazing.

I was so impacted by the name that I held onto it for decades until the time was right to launch Brigadoon.

Like most new ventures, there have been ups and downs.

Victory and loss.

The cottage of Brigadoon knows this as well.

On May 30, 2021, a brutal fire left Brigadoon the cottage severely and visibly damaged.

News of the fire spread across the Great Lakes and worldwide. Successfully the cottage has been restored to full glory.

+ "Sixteen months after a devastating fire ripped through the top floor of Mackinac Island's iconic Brigadoon cottage, the rebuild and renovation of this historic Queen Anne is complete. Its owners announced the milestone this week in a love letter of sorts to the legions of workers and well-wishers who have seen them through this monumental project."

You can read the full news clip here.

Brigadoon the cottage on Mackinac Island is a challenging place to visit.

Planning and multiple forms of transportation are required.

But a place that is idyllic, unaffected by time, or remote from reality should require a bit of grit and determination.

-Marc

Sound More Interesting at Cocktails Memo | September 16, 2022

25 talking points for better conversation at cocktails based on what I found interesting this week.

Global Street Smarts

1. More than half of the 750k mourners are expected to queue to pay their respect to Queen Elizabeth II.

2. Queen Elizabeth II met 13 presidents during her 70-year reign: From Truman to Biden, with the exception of LBJ.

3. Charles gets an early poll bump: Some 63% of Britons expect Charles III to do a good job as monarch, compared with 15% who think he’ll do a bad job.

4. Wise people will tell you we have lived for 77 years without a nuclear war, but there have been 2,121 tests done since the first in July 1945 involving 2,476 nuclear devices. So it's better to say we have lived for 77 years without nuclear weapons being used on a battlefield.

5. Freedom is possible: The Wagner Group, a pro-Kremlin mercenary organization, has told inmates at a Russian prison that they will be set free if they survive a 6-month tour of duty in Ukraine but executed if they try to desert.

6. On the sidelines of a summit in Uzbekistan, Putin and Xi held their first face-to-face meeting since February, when the two declared a “no-limits” partnership less than three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

7. China emerges as IMF competitor as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Argentina have together received more than $32bn since 2017

8. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a $6.5bn bill to fund weapons for Taiwan.

9. US invites Mexico to join an effort to shift semiconductor production from Asia to North America.

10. 80% of the global workforce does not sit behind a computer: The Deskless Workforce numbers 2.7 billion people.

11. US mortgage rates shot above 6 percent for the first time in 14 years.

12. Ford's plug-in Mach-E is expected to outsell the traditional Mustang by 2027.

13. Gap + Kanye West end their partnership.

14. Citigroup has opened a hub for junior bankers in the Spanish beach town of Málaga as part of its effort to lure talent.

15. Tencent Music plans to start trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

16. SoftBank is considering a third Vision Fund.

17. Five main reasons why the Bloomberg Terminal succeeds: knowing their client preferences; the cost of substitution; a superior brand and network effects; a disciplined pricing strategy; and a long-term vision around product expansion.

18. Coca-Cola Japan + Kirin to develop health drinks.

19. Tonal is raising money at a $1.9bn valuation.

20. Shell announced the exit of CEO Ben van Beurden as the oil giant looks to reinvent itself under group renewables boss Wael Sawan.

21. Ethereum finishes long-awaited energy-saving ‘merge’ upgrade.

22. The NFL, estimated revenues of $18bn last year, generated more cash than the NBA and MLB combined.

23. LAFC's Gareth Bale has MLS's top-selling jersey.

24. Barclays projects the esports 'ecosystem' could be worth $9.6bn by 2030.

25. Apple + Amazon passed on LIV Golf media rights.

-Marc

Pro-tip: The picture is of the lobby bar at Fasano Hotel in São Paulo.