Curated Commons // Edition 41
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the Forty-first edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in.
Live-streaming, as a real career opportunity
Early stats from China, but jobs of the future are going to look quite different.
Aliens might just be…real?
The US Govt just admitted that in as many as 18 instances, UFOs have demonstrated tech that doesn’t appear to be human.
Did you hear Twitter’s new mission statement?
Physical retail may be struggling, but for warehouses it is boom time!
Our growing love for ecommerce means speculative warehouse construction can’t be too far behind. Some fascinating stats from one region in the UK.
Who’s behind Telegram?
Fascinating profile of Telegram founder Pavel Durov and how he operates.
The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed
Some people in Texas realized that the demand response program they signed up for in exchange for entry into a lottery might actually work as designed!
Industry consolidation - two words with a lot of real-world impact
Tiktok and its role in fashion
Two very interesting stories highlight the growing importance of TikTok for retailers.
Retailers increasingly are looking to TikTok to gauge fashion trends.
But, and there’s always a but, what trends on TikTok? Interesting read on the Chinese content farms that are using #factory TikTok to drive interest in mundane products by showing videos of manufacturing processes. - https://restofworld.org/2021/the-chinese-content-farms-behind-factory-tiktok/
These stories reminded me of that wonderful word coined by Buzzfeed a few years ago in a very good story - Memefacturing or how there’s an entire market dedicated to creating physical products out of trending memes -https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/how-to-make-millions-of-hoverboards-almost-overnight
Evergiven continues to give
Fascinating read on the inside story of the ship that gave us endless memes. The shipping industry is endlessly fascinating.
There’s, almost always, a human behind many tech implementations
One point for our dystopian future, which is already here. A CCTV company is apparently paying remote workers in India to yell at armed robbers.
Algorithms work, well, almost
New peer-reviewed data cast doubt on a proprietary sepsis prediction algorithm developed by Epic and implemented at hundreds of hospitals in the U.S.
Called the Epic Sepsis Model, the tool is included as part of Epic’s electronic health record platform. According to the company, it calculates and indicates “the probability of a likelihood of sepsis” to help clinicians identify hard-to-spot cases.
While some providers have reported success with the tool, researchers affiliated with the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor found its output to be “substantially worse” than what was reported by the vendor when applied to a large retrospective sample of more than 27,000 adult Michigan Medicine patients.
“Am I sure that America will be a democracy in 10 years’ time? I’m not sure at all”
Very interesting read on the investment philosophy and culture of Baillie Gifford, the legendary Scottish investment firm, with quite some soundbites!
“I don’t see political risk as an issue that’s unique to China,” pointing to former president Donald Trump’s executive order to ban Chinese-owned app TikTok in the US. “We have no direct evidence that the west’s way of development is the only one or the superior one,” says Anderson. “The political decline of America is so great and so enormous and so threatening. Am I sure that America will be a democracy in 10 years’ time? I’m not sure at all.”
How to make sense of really big numbers
Interesting read on how to ‘humanize’ really large numbers. I, for one, will be more happy, if Indian business publications stick to one numbering and currency convention for starters.
Can tech read your mind?
A few years ago, I read this fascinating interview with Bryan Johnson, founder of a startup called Kernel, on how we will eventually have a chip in our brain. Looks like Kernel has made a lot more progress and are now about to ship $50,000 helmets that can, kinda sorta, read your mind! The implications are amazing.
More interesting links:
The virus is clearly not done, by far! "About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. vaccine...About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. vaccine- https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccinated-people-account-for-half-of-new-covid-19-delta-cases-in-israeli-outbreak-11624624326
Make what you will. Amazon acquires a secure encrypted messaging app, Wickr, which is very popular with journalists & criminals - https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnapp/amazon-acquires-encrypted-messaging-app-wickr
The CEO of VolksWagen spends up to two hours every week discussing his social media strategy! - https://www.ft.com/content/6a0670b2-01cd-4b4a-be6b-004f6083324d
Michelin now sells giant inflatable sails that promise to increase a ship’s fuel efficiency by as much 20% - https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/michelin-nifty-new-inflatable-sail-aims-decarbonize-large-vessels-1234619071/
Algorithmic decisions that treat humans as ‘disposable objects’ - worrying read about a Korean warehouse - https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3137503/death-injury-inhuman-conditions-korean-amazon
From American, with financialization love - “If You Sell a House These Days, the Buyer Might Be a Pension Fund” - https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801
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