"Startup" - Google News
December 31, 2020 at 08:25PM
https://ift.tt/350Sr4m
Local startup Scholars grows, tweaks approach to generational recruiting - Memphis Business Journal
"Startup" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MXTQ2S
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
Working moms shared some surprisingly positive insight into 2020, as part of the "Silver Linings Study." While a lot went horribly wrong, some parents say there was a lot of good, too.
There's no doubt about it, "challenging" puts 2020 mildly.
For Katie Moore, mom of 2.5-year-old Cooper, it was tough, and still is, a tough year.
“I’m on the phone all day long,” says Moore.
She and her husband both work. This past summer and fall, COVID-19 crept into their home, making her husband sick.
“I was like a single working mom for about 10 days before I ended up getting sick,” Moore said. “It was a struggle, we ended up swapping places.”
Ironically, she says, it was a blessing that they didn't get sick at the same time.
“We were able to man our 2.5-year-old while the other one was down for the count but it was a struggle and my husband is still dealing with after effects, a lot of fatigue, exhaustion,” Moore said. “So, this year has been a lot for our family.”
And yet, after all of that, she still found a silver lining.
“I think for me, I’ve always struggled with anxiety and being a perfectionist,” Moore said. “Throughout this time, I’ve realized I need to ask for help, that it’s okay not to be okay, I can’t do it all and this opportunity, while it's been hard, has allowed me to become my best self.”
She, and other respondents participating in the Silver Linings Study, shared quite a few things. For instance, the laundry can wait. Self-care matters.
“83% of moms reflected that they were able to watch their kids grow in ways they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see,” says Dr. Pamela Cohen, who wears a lot of hats as a social psychologist, behavioral economist and head of Werk Labs.
Weks Labs is the research arm of The Mom Project, which prides itself on helping businesses attract and retain female talent.
“There was a lot of heartbreaking comments, but there were also comments about how fortunate people felt for certain opportunities they had so we decided to do a silver linings study,” Cohen said.
And she says while not in any way diminishing the horrific devastation of the pandemic, there are quite a few positive things.
“We don’t have a commute anymore, we can fill that up with other things,” Cohen said. “People are getting to know each other better, where they were basically high-giving and going off with the kids somewhere or going to the next thing and driving to the next thing and now they don’t have to.”
Some moms cited more efficiency, more clarity in their professions or even a career change. More than half said it was nice to separate from a toxic workplace. As we head into a new year, some takeaways are that work/life balance does exist, nontraditional work days are trendy, and for Moore, she's no longer a robot living in a Groundhog Day.
“I think as a family, we hit some low points, but we really came together in the end,” Moore said. “We’re definitely closer. We get on each other’s nerves but we’ve definitely learned how to get through the tough times because I don’t think anything tougher than that can happen."
"Startup" - Google News
December 31, 2020 at 02:56AM
https://ift.tt/380L270
DC-area founders' and funders' 2021 predictions for startup scene - Washington - Washington Business Journal
"Startup" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MXTQ2S
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
“It was literally somebody saying, mayor, here’s another one, (some) words to that effect, I’m paraphrasing, and I said let’s talk about it, let’s get (former chief risk officer Tamika Puckett) involved, and there was a subsequent email from her because I was pushing her on what are we doing, where are we on revising the search warrant protocols, and she gave a detailed update,” Lightfoot previously said, summarizing the exchange.
Nearly a year after a soft launch of its geospatial innovation center, downtown-based startup incubator T-Rex is growing into a local hub for geospatial entrepreneurs, academic researchers and federal employees of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Construction is expected to begin any day now on its third floor to make room for the NGA’s Moonshot Labs. It will be the first time NGA employees embed in an innovation community to collaborate on unclassified projects.
Alan Hrebec, project lead, said the space will house between 50 and 70 NGA employees. He expects it will open in the spring.
Hrebec said the design will look like any other modern tech office, with a mix of glass offices and open seating.
“We’re trying to get as close to that industry-like feeling — that space where people want to be,” he said. “I'm young, you think of those cool spaces. I want to walk in and feel energized and inspired.”
Hrebec said the goal of the new lab is to open up the traditionally guarded agency as a resource to the community.
“We’ve been so focused on what’s top secret that we haven’t really looked at what could be unclassified," he said. "So if you look at that pivot, if you look at NGA doing more in the unclassified sector, that’s more we can share.”
Mark Tatgenhorst, a 33-year veteran of the NGA, will serve as a liaison between the NGA lab and T-Rex’s innovation center, known as Geosaurus, where he also serves as program director.
Having the two entities just a floor apart, he said, will give the NGA access to new ideas and talent, while providing startups an opportunity to work with experienced government researchers.
“For NGA it’s an important thing because, one, it creates an ability for them to adopt innovation culture. Innovation in the government is different in this type of environment,” he said.
Tatgenhorst said there are three main goals for Geosaurus: to connect the geospatial community in the region; create an environment focused on innovation and entrepreneurship; and develop a talent pipeline to sustain the industry.
Geosaurus is now home to 15 startups, as well as more established companies — like contracting firm Leidos — and academic offices, including from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Tatgenhorst said the coronavirus pandemic slowed things down a bit, forcing the center to close between March and June. While many employees are still working from home, he said things are gaining steam again.
“I think some of the successes that we've seen here, even during the pandemic, have been monumental,” he said. “We've attracted companies nationally into St. Louis, to be a part of this ecosystem. And within the last couple months, we've had a lot of international geospatial companies who heard about the geospatial revolution, so to speak, in St. Louis and want to be a part of it.”
Geosaurus has one tenant from British Columbia, Canada, and Tatgenhorst said he’s spoken with others from Switzerland and New Zealand, though the center is currently at capacity.
While Tatgenhorst has a long background working for the NGA, he said Geosaurus doesn’t just focus on military intelligence, but rather on how geospatial technology can be used across industries. He said the center is home to companies working with drones, indoor navigation and the rail industry, among other things.
The center offers entrepreneurs different kinds of support, including mentoring and educational programming, as well as funding.
The center recently launched a “geo seed” program to fund geospatial-related university research. It is also housing five startups that recently received an equity-free $50,000 grant, part of a new geospatial-track from Arch Grants.
T-Rex Executive Director Patty Hagen said she recently helped raise funding to build an extended reality lab — which would give researchers the tools to work on augmented, virtual and mixed-reality technology.
Hagen said the larger goal around supporting geospatial companies is to drive economic growth in the region. She’s part of a strategic planning committee — known as GeoFutures — that laid out a plan this summer to grow St. Louis into a global geospatial hub within 10 years.
“Our role, that we see, is to continue to build resources that can support early-stage entrepreneurs, help them get on their feet, help them experiment. And then get those companies out into the community growing jobs and building economic opportunity — inclusive economic opportunity — throughout the region,” she said.
Hagen said T-Rex plans to host a grand opening of Geosaurus once it’s safe to convene in large groups again.
"Startup" - Google News
December 30, 2020 at 06:19PM
https://ift.tt/3o2KT8H
T-Rex Startup Incubator Is Becoming A Geospatial Focal Point In St. Louis - St. Louis Public Radio
"Startup" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MXTQ2S
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
A month into California’s peak storm season, the lack of wet weather is beginning to weigh on the state’s water supply.
The snowpack in the Sierra and southern Cascades, which provides as much as a third of the water used by California cities and farms, is about 55% of average for this time of year. It hasn’t been this low at this time since 2017, when the state was emerging from a five-year drought.
State water officials are scheduled to lug their snow gauges into the mountains Wednesday and confirm the measurement in the first snow survey of the season — the unofficial time for Californians to start worrying about water for the coming year.
Two more historically wet months lie ahead, and a few big storms could start to rebuild the snowpack. But the bleak December picture, on top of last year’s dry winter, is renewing concerns about drought and prompting water agencies to begin calling for people to conserve more.
“In California, it’s not if the next drought is coming, it’s when,” said Chris Orrock, spokesperson for the state Department of Water Resources, which conducts the snow survey. “We’re having below-average dry conditions now, and we’re continuing to monitor it.”
The U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the federal government and University of Nebraska at Lincoln, considers 95% of California to be in at least a moderate state of drought. That’s the state’s driest condition since March 2016.
California has always bounced between wet and dry times, and water managers have learned to deal with such swings. But the variability has grown with climate change, meaning there’s a higher probability that a given year will be either extremely wet or extremely dry.
“The chances of losing a storm on the shoulders of the season have gone up,” said LeRoy Westerling, a climate scientist at UC Merced, referring to the possibility of shortened wet seasons. “We’ve seen years where we lost our fall and spring storms.”
This fall was one of the driest that Northern California has seen. For much of the season, a mass of high-pressure air hung off the West Coast, pushing the storm track to the north.
The lack of fall precipitation rounded out an extraordinarily dry calendar year in many parts of the state. San Francisco has recorded just 7.76 inches of rain since Jan. 1, putting this calendar year on track to be the third-driest since 1850, according to the private Golden Gate Weather Services.
In recent weeks, the high-pressure system over the Pacific that kept storms from hitting the coast has begun to weaken, and California has started to get a little more rain and snow. Much of the Sierra and north state even saw a white Christmas.
The National Weather Service is calling for a small chance of showers in the Bay Area on Wednesday night and likely on-and-off rain starting Friday and continuing at least through early next week.
Long-term forecasts revolve around La Niña. The climate pattern characterized by cool temperatures in the tropical Pacific tends to maintain a northward push on storms. The Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says that as a result of La Niña, drier-than-average weather is probable in California over the next three months in all but the northernmost counties.
Related Stories
As it stands, the state’s water supplies are running behind average. California’s 154 largest reservoirs contain about 82% of the water they should hold at this time of year, according to the Department of Water Resources. Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir, is at 72% of its historical average. Lake Oroville, the second largest, is at 57%.
San Francisco’s water system, centered on Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite, is an anomaly, holding slightly more water than average for this point in the season, according to the city Public Utilities Commission.
The snowpack over the next couple of months, which come spring will begin to melt, will determine how well storage holds up at California’s reservoirs. Snow levels in the north state, home of California’s biggest reservoirs, are most pivotal.
As of Monday, the snowpack in the northern Sierra and southern Cascades was 56% of average for this time of year. It was 59% in the central Sierra and 33% in the southern end of the range.
The low numbers have prompted the Department of Water Resources to project that water agencies that get water from state-run reservoirs will receive only 10% of their requested allocation next year. Although the allocation is subject to change, many water agencies aren’t taking chances.
The Zone 7 Water Agency, which relies on state supplies to provide water to more than a quarter million people in Pleasanton, Livermore and Dublin, is beginning to ask residents to go a little lighter at the tap. The supplier has enough water in storage to make it through whatever comes this winter, but water managers don’t want to get to the point where they’re scraping the bottom of the reservoir.
“Based on 2020 being a dry year, we’ve started light conservation messaging,” said Valerie Pryor, general manager for the district. “Obviously, two back-to-back dry years and multiple dry years is not what we prefer.”
When COVID-19 initially blazed through Asia, Europe and then the United States, global public health experts worried that it could be catastrophic for Africa, with its crowded cities, poorly funded health sector and lack of testing facilities. The U.N. Economic Commission for Africa in April predicted up to 300,000 deaths this year if the virus couldn’t be contained on the continent. Yet it was the U.S, with its superior health system, that hit that grim milestone first, and so far, Africa has been largely spared the worst of the devastation experienced by the rest of the world. As of Dec. 29, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was reporting total 2.6 million cases and 63,300 deaths for a population of 1.2 billion. That’s roughly one case for every 500 people, compared to one in 20 in the U.S.
However, those numbers might not actually reflect the reality on the ground. Overall, testing for COVID-19 cases has been comparatively limited on the continent, which could be contributing to lower case numbers. South Africa, which has the highest testing rate in the region, was only performing 0.68 tests a day per 1,000 people in mid-December, compared to 4.3 in the U.S., according to Our World in Data (Denmark, which has the highest test rate, is currently performing 15.1 tests per 1,000). That might explain why the continent has lower-than-expected reported case rates.
As for COVID-19-related deaths, one way to estimate the true impact of the virus is to look at total excess deaths this year, calculated by comparing the overall mortality figures in 2020 to previous annual averages. Those figures in South Africa point to the possibility of a higher number of deaths from COVID-19 than the official records show. A report by the South African Medical Research Council noted that South Africa saw some 17,000 extra deaths from natural causes between early May and mid-July, a 59% increase in excess deaths compared to what was expected over the same period. However, the Africa CDC says there has been no indication that a large number of COVID-19 deaths have been missed.
If official numbers are to be believed, the African continent trails much of the rest of the world when it comes to case fatality rates, and there have been fewer scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral parlors coming from the continent compared to other parts of the globe. Nevertheless, some countries across the continent are currently seeing increases in COVID-19 cases amid concerns of a second wave. South Africa has seen a sharp increase recently, amid evidence that a new variant has been detected; President Cyril Ramaphosa announced new restrictions on Monday, citing the daily record of 14,790 infections recorded on Christmas Day, which he described as “a cause for alarm.” Over the weekend, the country’s total recorded cases since the start of the pandemic reached one million at the weekend.
But overall, African countries have largely defied the doomsday predictions. Why that might be the case is unclear. “If the data is reliable—and that is a big question mark for me—there would be multiple explanations for lower numbers, not one solid reason,” says Cape Town-based independent clinical epidemiologist Dr Nandi Siegfried. It could be due to a lower average age, a more favorable climate, solid public health policies or fewer co-morbidities on the continent—each offers an imperfect defense, which taken cumulatively, contributes to an overall protective effect.
Here, we break down some of those reasons.
Preparation is the best preventative
Many African countries have poor medical infrastructure, but they also have longstanding experience with infectious disease. When the WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern at the end of January, doctors and public health officials in countries that already had experience with outbreaks of other infectious disease sprang into action. “We had to learn the hard way,” Liberian public health expert Dr. Mosoka Fallah told TIME in March, referring to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three West African countries that bore the brunt of the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic. “Ebola knocked us over, but now we know not to underestimate anything; we know how important it is to prepare.”
Fallah and a team of Liberian public health officials set up a training program after the WHO announcement at the end of January to help doctors and nurses at regional hospitals recognize the symptoms of COVID-19. They brought in testing kits and re-instated the hand washing stands that had been ubiquitous during the Ebola outbreak. They ramped up their contact-tracing protocols and established screening points at airports, even before the first case had been identified in the country.
That experience meant that that when it came to social distancing, many African citizens were already accustomed to the elbow bump, frequent hand washing and the need for masking.
According to the WHO, the single best way to stop the spread of COVID-19 is by wearing a mask. An August 2020 poll by the Partnership for Evidence-based COVID-19 Response found that among respondents in 18 African countries, more than 85% said they had worn a face mask in the previous week.
Early shutdowns
Countries like Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria shut down early, and hard. Businesses were closed, borders shut, gatherings were banned, and in-person schooling stopped. Curfews were enforced. The moves were unpopular, and economically destructive, but they also bought time for medical personnel to prepare hospitals, source supplies and learn from treatment innovations perfected elsewhere, such as using oxygen instead of scarce ventilators, and turning severely ill patients on their stomachs. Preventing that spread of the virus through lockdowns while also preparing to treat the sickest effectively is paying dividends now.
A younger populace, with fewer comorbidities
If South African epidemiologist Siegfried could point to one telling factor in the continent’s low COVID-19 mortality rate, it would be that Africa’s median age is 19 years old. “We don’t have many people over the age of 50,” she says, noting that the virus is far more dangerous in older populations. “It seem logical that a relatively youthful population would result in a lower toll.” That, and the fact that diabetes, obesity and hypertension, some of the comorbidities that appear to make COVID-19 more deadly, are also less common among the continent’s population than they are in other parts of the world.
Climate and geography
The COVID-19 virus appears to dissipate more quickly outside, where infectious respiratory droplets and aerosols can be easily dispersed, which is why most public health officials recommend that socializing, when necessary, be done outside. With a few exceptions, Africa’s mild winters mean that much of life can be, and is, lived outside, especially in rural areas. Limited public transport networks, usually a curse in the region, also mean that Africans do not travel as much between countries and cities, minimizing close contact and the risk of exposure.
Hygiene hypothesis
Conversely, people do congregate closely in cities, particularly in Africa’s slums, which are home to half of the continent’s urban population. At the beginning of the outbreak, public health officials feared that COVID-19 would spread like wildfire in Africa’s sprawling informal settlements, where social distancing is impossible and sanitation facilities are limited. But so far, death rates haven’t met those worst-case scenario predictions.
Some epidemiologists suspect that the close contact with other people and regular exposure to different pathogens may in fact make people more resistant to the worst forms of COVID-19. South Africa’s top virologist, Shabir Madhi, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand who is leading a vaccine trial in the country, told TIME in July that one hypothesis is that constant exposure to other coronaviruses, such as those that sometimes cause the common cold, could provide some degree of immunity. “Maybe our poor living conditions could be working in our favor,” he said, noting that a significantly higher of cases appeared to be mild or asymptomatic, compared to cases elsewhere. “I’m not sure what else would explain the disparity,” he said, while noting that more research needed to be done.
Still, other countries around the world, such as Brazil, have a similar combination of slums, BCG vaccination, warm weather and a younger population, yet still have high COVID-19 infection rates. It could just be that Africa’s early and robust public health response delayed the onset of what may yet be the catastrophe that epidemiologists feared. Case numbers across the continent, already increasing, could continue to rise as the holiday season pushes residents of large cities into remote villages. “That might drive the pandemic,” John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, told reporters in a December online press briefing.
Africa is already recording 10,000 to 12,000 cases a day, inching back upwards to its July peak of 14,000. Many hope the region can hold out for a little longer, at least until vaccines are available in sufficient quantities to inoculate the continent. Madhi warns against that tendency. “Vaccines are not the answer to our problems,” he says, even though he has been running one of Africa’s biggest vaccine trials for the past six months. “Until there’s enough vaccines that can be spread across the globe, our most critical defense is in avoiding mass gatherings and using face masks. In terms of controlling this particular pandemic, the focus still has to be around these nonpharmaceutical interventions.”
Johnny Manziel has agreed to resume his playing career with a startup league called Fan Controlled Football, he told ESPN this week.
The league, scheduled to begin play in February, will feature 7-on-7 games where fans set rosters, call plays and interact in a blend of traditional and esports environments.
"The more I heard about what this was going to be, the more I felt it was going to be something that was just very fun," Manziel said. "It's going to be very fan-oriented and something I could get behind without being extremely, extremely, extremely serious, the way that my football career has been in the past."
Manziel, 28, connected with FCF co-founder and CEO Sohrob Farudi through comedian Bob Menery, a mutual friend. Manziel last played football in April 2019 for the Alliance of American Football and also has played in The Spring League and the Canadian Football League since the Cleveland Browns released him in 2015.
He said this week that he wasn't looking to return to football at any level but was drawn to playing the FCF version on his own terms. Since the AAF folded, Manziel has moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he said he plays golf, throws the football in the backyard with friends, watches football on the weekend and has had a "normal, laid-back lifestyle" for the duration of 2020.
"Life gives you opportunities sometimes to do something that you would still like to do if it was in a different capacity," Manziel said. "This has a lot of potential to just be a good time and still be football-centric. They're going to let the people [who] join this league be who they are and have fun with it and be a little bit more free than what football is sometimes. That's definitely what appealed to me. They don't want me to change who I am or anything else. They want to come out, put a good product out and be fun with it."
Farudi said the league will place a heavy emphasis on connecting fans with the players' lives away from the field, via social media or other digital integration, making it "built for a guy like" Manziel.
"It's not only what you can do on the field, but who you are off the field," Farudi said. "We want them to connect to fans and be authentic. I think if you look at Johnny's career, he was electric on and off the field. He has that big, bold personality. Sure, he rubbed some people the wrong way. But he just has this presence about him.
"He got into these other leagues and, I hate to say this, but it's like the handcuffs were put on. You had to act differently. You had to walk and talk differently. He couldn't just be himself. That's where we want to be different as a league. We're really embracing this idea of being more than an athlete. ... We're very comfortable with having players be big personalities off the field and doing what they want to do. For us, it's as much as about the off-field opportunities to connect with the fan base as it is about the football on the field."
The Heisman Trophy winner in 2012 at Texas A&M, Manziel was the No. 22 overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft. He played in 14 games over two seasons for the Browns, but off-field issues and an inattention to his job prompted the Browns to cut ties with him. Manziel said in 2018 that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had abused alcohol to battle depression, episodes that often found their way to social media or were posted there himself.
Asked where he is now on a personal level, Manziel said: "I wake up with a smile on my face way more than I used to in the past, when people would have said that I had everything. It's funny how life works sometimes. You have everything and you can be upset, and when you have a lot less, you can be way happier. I'm at a point in my life where I'm 28 years old and I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing moving forward and trying to re-create an identity, and that's what the past year has been about for me."
The FCF's lead investor is Lightspeed Venture Partners. The league will begin with four teams, each of which will have celebrity owners, including NFL players Richard Sherman, Austin Ekeler and the retired Marshawn Lynch. Other owners include hip-hop artist Quavo, boxer Mike Tyson and Menery.
The teams will play a six-week schedule, with games livestreamed on Twitch from a league-leased facility in Atlanta. The games will last about an hour, and the field will be 50-by-35 yards with 10-yard end zones. Players will have backgrounds in college Division I and II programs, along with the CFL, XFL and Indoor Football League. The FCF recently received a commitment from former Florida State and Hampton quarterback Deondre Francois.
Farudi described the league's vision as a "gamification" of the fan experience targeted at the 18-35 age demographic. Fans who register will participate in much of the football operations.
"The younger generation isn't sitting through a three-hour game anymore," Farudi said. "They want it quick and easy. Part of our concept is, 'Let's give it to them quick and easy.' It's a one-hour game. It's interactive. You're watching and interacting at the same time."
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A carjacking and two armed robberies are the latest in a pattern of criminal activity that is leaving South Philadelphia business owners and residents terrified.
Those who live around 23rd Street and Passyunk Avenue said there has been a rash of crimes recently.
"It's bad. It's very bad out here," said resident Lance Lucas.
Resident Vander Knight said, "I even get in the house when it's dark, I don't even want to be out"
So it left no one surprise when community members heard from police of the latest incident.
Police said two men carjacked a driver and drove the stolen vehicle to the Dollar Tree at the 2000 block of West Oregon Avenue to stage a robbery.
Minutes later, they drove less than a mile to a 7-Eleven on the 2300 block of West Passyunk Avenue, where they posed as customers.
"They came in a car which I later understood that it was hijacked," said Vincent Emmanuel of the Delaware Valley Franchise Owners Association.
Surveillance video from the convenience store shows one man walking up to the counter to pay for something.
When he gets his change, he pulls a gun, lays it on the counter and announces a hold-up.
All this unfolds as normal business continues in the background.
"Those employees at the store are very trained for that kind of dealings," said Emmanuel.
Minutes later, the second suspect comes to the counter and lays his gun on the counter, apparently to hurry things up.
Meanwhile, a few feet away, another clerk continues to check out a customer, apparently oblivious to what was going on next to them.
Moments later, the two men grab the money and flee the scene.
"One of the biggest worries for a retailer is whether your employees get hurt," said Emmanuel.
Some residents have their own theories of what is fueling all this crime.
"I think it's all because nobody has any money and everybody's robbing people and everything," said Vander Knight. "It's gotten so bad."
And some feel COVID mitigation efforts may also be contributing.
"When you have people walking around with masks on, they feel like they can do anything they want cause they can get away with it," said Lucas.
Emmanuel added, "I don't know who's watching this and who's paying attention, but unless something is done, with the COVID and all these firearm issues and robberies, these stores will go out of business."
Police Public Affairs confirmed that multiple robberies did occur Monday night in the area. Some by one male, others by two or more.
Officials said they are investigating and will release more information once they get a better handle on all that happened.
"bad" - Google News
December 30, 2020 at 11:18AM
https://ift.tt/2L5x7DM
'It's very bad out here': South Philadelphia crime wave has residents, business owners worried - WPVI-TV
"bad" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SpwJRn
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
For the second straight game on national television this season, the New Orleans Pelicans were embarrassed. Following a Christmas Day beatdown, New Orleans traveled to Phoenix on Tuesday and were manhandled, trailing by as many as 40 points en route to a 111-86 loss.
The first quarter was competitive between the two sides with the Suns holding just a two-point lead. Over the second and third quarters, though, the Suns outscored the Pelicans 69-32.
Zion Williamson finished with 20 points on 9-of-13 shooting while Brandon Ingram and Steven Adams had 13 and 11 points, combined. No other Pelican finished with more than seven points as the team shot 12.5% from three on 24 attempts.
The Good: Didn't lose by 50?
It would have been hard to imagine any team challenging the Clippers for largest margin of defeat at 51 but the Pelicans got closer than they probably would have hoped. And yet, they still didn't lose by as many points as the Heat, who were blown out by Jrue Holiday and the Bucks 47 points while allowing a league-record 29 three-pointers. Honorable mentions: The bench in the fourth quarter
The Bad: All of it
It's an impossible and fruitless task to pinpoint which aspect of the Pelicans' play on Tuesday was worst. The defense couldn't and wouldn't stop anyone. The offense couldn't create open looks and didn't knock down the few it created. As things got worse, players began forcing the issue offensively which only led to more turnovers and more empty possessions.
Lonzo Ball wasn't immune to the poor play on the night. Unfortunately, when he plays poorly, it's typically pretty loud bad performances. On Tuesday, he finished 3-of-12 from the field, 1-of-7 from three and had just seven points with three turnovers. In all honesty, there was just nothing positive to take away from that game.
SINGAPORE (Bloomberg) --In January, as a mysterious illness ripped through the Chinese city of Wuhan, global oil prices plunged. Two thousand miles away in the island state of Singapore, one of the most powerful men in the world of commodities trading, Lim Oon Kuin, quietly added to his vast stockpiles of fuel – making a bet that China would successfully control the spread of the new disease.
That gamble soured quickly. While China did curb the coronavirus at home, the pandemic that followed brought crude oil prices tumbling as much as 70%. Banks tried to recover loans from Lim’s company, Hin Leong Trading Pte, triggering one of the biggest scandals in the oil industry this century. Lim’s empire collapsed, owing $3.5 billion to 23 banks, and the fallout from the debacle is still reverberating into 2021, shaking out large tracts of the vast and often opaque $4 trillion global oil-trading industry.
The losers are likely to be the hundreds of small trading firms, many of them employing only a handful of people, who will find it expensive, if not impossible, to meet the increased demands for information from banks that have become wary of lending them money. Those gaining from the crisis are the big global trading houses such as Trafigura Group and Vitol SA, that retain the confidence of the finance companies and are better able to absorb the costs of increased oversight.
A sign of those changes came earlier this month when banks in the major oil trading hub of Singapore issued new guidelines for financing that could curb some of the practices that led to the shock from Hin Leong, whose creditors, including HSBC Holdings Plc. and Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings Ltd., are still fighting to recover funds.
Netherlands-based ABN Amro Bank NV has said it will pull out of commodity trade finance altogether, and others, including France’s BNP Paribas SA, said they were scaling back or reviewing their businesses. More than 20 veteran traders and industry bankers told Bloomberg News in interviews that financing for the industry is tightening, with the contraction likely to continue next year as bankers apply stricter standards or cut their exposure to smaller merchants.
Historical Crash
“Banks have become more risk averse in this environment,” prompting them to focus on the large trading houses, said Steven Beck, Head of Trade & Supply Chain Finance at the Asian Development Bank. He said the Hin Leong crisis has made a deficit of trade finance worse.
The ongoing shake-up in the industry revolves around two financial instruments that enable the thousands of deals on which the global commodities supply chain relies — letters of credit and letters of indemnity. Trading companies offer cargoes and other assets to banks and finance firms as collateral to secure letters of credit as payment guarantees to their suppliers. The traders would also sometimes provide a letter of indemnity — a guarantee that they possess a cargo in lieu of shipping documents — to prove the authenticity of the trade.
Vanishing Cargoes
Such guarantees were central to the downfall of Hin Leong. In April, Bloomberg News was the first to report the financial difficulties at the company after some lenders had pulled credit lines amid concerns over Hin Leong’s ability to pay its debts. But by the time the bankers came calling for the pledged cargoes, at least 6 million barrels of oil and fuel weren’t there. Lim said he had secretly sold some of the barrels. Later, when sued by HSBC, Lim denied that he used forged papers to obtain financing, saying the documents were “mistakenly” issued.
An emailed inquiry seeking comment from the Lim family wasn't answered. DBS declined to comment. ``We remain committed to growing our business in Singapore,'' HSBC said in an email.
The scandal hit the industry hard. Banking revenues from commodity trade finance dropped 29% in the first half of this year, according industry consultancy Crisil Coalition.
Commodities traders typically thrive on wild price swings of the sort that accompanied the Covid-19 crisis. But this year, while bigger players have done well, many smaller firms are struggling to survive the fallout of Hin Leong and the geopolitical tensions underpinned by the virus and China’s trade dispute with the U.S.
Many were already battling thinner margins in recent years due to rising competition and flattening demand. Standalone traders in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia surveyed by Bloomberg News said their credit lines from banks were reduced over the past six months, while costs for storage facilities and derivatives brokers’ fees have risen.
Meanwhile, Lim’s sprawling empire began to slowly unwind. Ocean Bunkering, the business he started with a fishing boat in the 1960’s, filed for liquidation in late November. OK Lim, as he’s known in the industry, also sold his assets in Singapore’s western region of Tuas. Lim himself is being investigated by the Singaporean police and was released on bail of S$3 million ($2.3 million) in August. Two lenders and the trader’s court-appointed managers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, have taken legal action against the Lim family.
Other commodity traders, such as Agritrade International and ZenRock Commodities, became insolvent around the same time as Hin Leong. Companies depending on bank lending facilities faced a liquidity crunch as commodity prices plunged due to the pandemic, disrupting trade and reducing the value of assets pledged against the loans.
Oil tanks store fuel on the outskirts of Ningbo in China on April 22. Lim Oon Kuin’s bet that China would quickly contain Covid contributed to the collapse of a trading empire he spent half a century building. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
The fallout could be particularly devastating in Asia, where hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the supply chains for natural resources, from ship and port owners and storage facilities, to traders, insurers, financiers and buyers.
Commodity trading companies in “least-developed countries might increasingly struggle for financial support as banks shrink and re-prioritize their business,” said Jean-Francois Lambert, an industry consultant and former trade finance banker with HSBC. “The incident and frauds involved mid-size local groups. It is therefore not surprising that international banks shun such companies to concentrate on more established names.”
More Scrutiny
To restore Singapore’s reputation as a trading hub, the government launched a set of best practices last month for commodity finance, including the need to understand traders’ corporate governance and risk management practices and to obtain sufficient transparency on transactions.
That may further help the big traders, who have seen a windfall from the decline in business for smaller rivals. Trafigura posted its best gross profit in the firm’s 27-year history in the year through Sept. 30 and promised to expand its business. Big rivals such as Vitol, Mercuria Energy Group and Gunvor Group, are also expected to have done well this year.
For banks, the sheer size of the industry make it a potential money-spinner for those who can navigate the risk. Trade finance “is the oil that greases the trade and enables us to achieve a lot of goals around prosperity and development,'' said ADB's Beck. “And we ignore that at our peril.''
It was a rough start, some tough moments, a pretty furious comeback, but ultimately, the Miami Hurricanes lost the 2020 Cheez-It Bowl to the Oklahoma State Cowboys 37-34.
No messing around tonight. Let’s jump into the final edition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of the 2020 season.
QB D’Eriq King. 10-13 passing for 113 yards and 1 TD. King helped Miami start to claw back from an early 21-0 deficit and showcased his now-trademark calm, lead-by-example demeanor and performance. Why so few stats? We’ll get into that later.
QB N’Kosi Perry. Playing off the bench as relief for King, Perry reminded people that he has PLENTY of talent. 19-34 passing for 228 yards and 2 TDs. And, those numbers would have been SUBSTANTIALLY more impressive had Perry not suffered no fewer than 6 bad, and I mean BAD, drops by the receiving corps. I know everyone has their favorite QB on the roster, and with all due respect to the better player (King), Perry has been, and is, mine. And I’m happy my guy went out there and played his ass off, in a tough spot. Bravo.
TE Brevin Jordan. 8 catches for 96 yards and 2 TDs, the second of which was an incredible 1 handed catch he made while being interfered with (not that the refs called it). If you forgot how good Jordan is, he reminded you tonight.
WR Mike Harley. 8 catches for 69 (nice) yards and a TD. Solid receiving performance from the senior tonight.
CB Te’Cory Couch. 10 tackles, a TFL, and 2 PBUs.
S Bubba Bolden. 9 tackles, 2.5 TFL.
DT Nesta Silvera. Light on stats with 4 tackles and 1 TFL, but once Miami’s defense showed up midway through the 2nd quarter, it was led by Silvera getting up the field and creating havoc.
RB Cam’Ron Harris. 52 yards, most of which came on his 42 yard TD run. A bright spot on a couple plays.
Total passing: 30-48, 356 yards, 3 TD, 0 INT.
6.6 yards per play
5.2 yards per run
11.9 yards per completion
27 first downs
4-4 red zone scoring
9 TFL
2 sacks
Allowed 2.6 yards per run (massive improvement from the program-worst rushing defense performance the last time out vs UNC)
Losing. It sucks. I hate it. I hate losing SO MUCH.
Multiple dropped interceptions. Te’Cory Couch. Bubba Bolden. DJ Ivey. There were like 4-5 balls that should have been intercepted tonight. But Miami just couldn’t get it done.
4-14 on 3rd down
3-5 on 4th down, including the game-ending 4th down that was not converted
Allowed 33+ minutes time of possession
Allowed 11.3 yards per completion
Muffed punt by Harley, recovered by OK State. Luckily, it didn’t lead to points. But still. No bueno.
Fumble on zone-read exchange between Perry and Donald Chaney Jr. Another avoidable error.
D’Eriq King injured his right knee/leg late in the 2nd quarter. He needed to be helped to the locker room and could not put any weight on the leg. King did not return to the game. Just........damnit.
King was seen on the sideline in the 2nd half wearing a bulky knee brace on his right knee, and on crutches. Per the ESPN broadcast, King will be evaluated in Miami tomorrow. Here’s hoping his injury isn’t catastrophic.
The refs. I’m gonna keep this short: the refs screwed Miami on multiple occasions in this game. Overturning a 2pt conversion without clear evidence to do so. Calling SEVERAL bogus pass interference penalties, including one that negated a momentum-changing interception. Bad calls abounded on both sides tonight, but the worse and more impactful calls went against Miami. Over and over and over again.
8 penalties for 76 yards, but when you negate turnovers and more, it was much more impactful than that.
All the drops. Remember when I said Perry’s line could have been better? Without 5-6 really bad, and I mean REALLY BAD drops by the receivers, he would have had over 300 yards and an extra TD or two.
WRs Mark Pope and Dee Wiggins. Both were the main culprits on the bad drops today. It was as bad as earlier in the season when, following such a performance, Miami opened up the WR spots for open competition. Pope and Wiggins’s drops tonight were that bad, or worse. I wish I had the words to properly describe how atrocious they played today. Despite of everything else that happened tonight, these drops cost Miami a chance to win. Plain and simple.
The last play call of the night. A tunnel screen to Michael Redding III for 4 yards on 4th and 9 for the ballgame? Really, Rhett? THAT is the playcall there?!
Continuing to play Pope and Wiggins. At some point, drops have to be met with time on the bench. And they more than passed that threshold.
Allowed 29 first downs
Allowed a freshman WR with 2 touches (1 catch, 1 run) all season hit a lick with 6 catches for 118 yards and 3 TDs. He had more TOUCHDOWNS today than he had TOUCHES OF THE FOOTBALL all season prior to tonight. Woof.
Some nice moments running the ball by Chaney Jr and Harris. Some really good quarterbacking by both King and Perry off the bench. Some nice catches by Harley, Jordan, Mallory, and Harris. But man, the blocking up front — whiffing on blocks at key times — and the drops. All. The. Drops. And 2 turnovers.
Had moments, sure, but spotting OK State a 21-0 lead, missing tackles, allowing an unknown freshman to score 3 TDs, and all the penalties (deserved or not), weight things down far too much for me. And like, why were we playing with CBs 12 yards off early in the game while OSU marched up and down the field to score time after time after time?
Punting was great from our All-American punter. Kicking was great by our All-American kicker. There were even a couple nice returns. But there were 3 penalties on specials. And a turnover (muffed punt). Demerit, demerit, demerit.
The main positive was not letting this team quit after going down 21-0 in the first quarter. Oh, and Manny Diaz pulling a Mark Richt and FINALLY showing some emotion, getting pissed at one of a great many bullshit pass interference penalties during the game. But it took a while for the offense to get going. And lord knows it took a while for the defense to get going. But, in the end, it was Miami’s 11th bowl loss in the last 12 bowls. And, like it or not, that’s on coaching.
And just like that, the Miami Hurricanes 2020 football season has come to an end.
Share your thoughts on the game, or the general state of affairs, in the comments section below.
"bad" - Google News
December 30, 2020 at 10:22AM
https://ift.tt/3htsEa4
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Oklahoma State Cheez-It Bowl edition - State Of The U
"bad" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SpwJRn
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
SINGAPORE — The increasing regulatory scrutiny of Alibaba-affiliate and financial technology powerhouse Ant Group could be bad for the Chinese economy as well as China's financial technology sector, says Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research.
The highly-anticipated listing of Chinese tech giant Ant Group — which was set to be the world's largest initial public offering — was abruptly suspended in November.
It came shortly after Ant's controller Jack Ma and other executives at the firm were interviewed by Chinese authorities over regulatory concerns.
"It is true that when Jack Ma gave his terrible speech ... that annoyed a lot of senior politicians, I thought that was gonna be kind of a one-off thing," Collier told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Tuesday.
He was referring to the Chinese billionaire's speech in late October where he reportedly appeared to criticize regulators during a controversial speech. Ma is the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which owns a roughly 33% stake in Ant Group.
Days later, Ant's dual-listing in both Shanghai and Hong Kong was suddenly suspended, sending shares of Alibaba plunging.
"Clearly, this was an excuse by the leadership and probably the state banks to crack down on the entire fintech … sector," Collier said. "Part of this is legitimate because of concerns about, you know, the possibility … of a financial crisis. But they already had clipped the wings of Ant Financial in quite serious ways."
It's not good for the future of fintech or the future of the Chinese economy
Andrew Collier
Managing Director, Orient Capital Research
The troubles for both Alibaba and Ant have only grown since, with Chinese authorities announcing an anti-monopoly probe into the e-commerce titan last week. Chinese regulators also recently ordered Ant Group to rectify its businesses.
Those developments resulted in Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed stock suffering yet another drop — with more than 831 billion Hong Kong dollars (approx. $107 billion) of its market cap was wiped out in just two sessions, based on CNBC's calculations.
Collier said the regulatory scrutiny surrounding Ant was likely both centered around a desire to protect the Chinese consumer, as well as politics.
"Now, since they're getting so serious and they're coming up with new allegations and telling them to reduce large areas of their business, it's clear it's partly a political aim at reducing the size of these companies so they don't have significant market share and threaten the existence of the state system," he added.
"It's not good for the future of fintech or the future of the Chinese economy," Collier said.
"bad" - Google News
December 30, 2020 at 07:02AM
https://ift.tt/34TJ1Ia
Analyst argues that China's regulation of Ant Group is bad for financial technology — and China's economy - CNBC
"bad" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SpwJRn
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
East Bay singer Kenny Washington earned a Grammy nomination for his first studio under his own name in 2020.
A most unusual year calls for a different approach to evaluating the albums that have crossed my path over the past 12 months.
In the best of times I’m grateful for new music that moves, inspires and entertains me, but in this annus horribilis music has provided an emotional lifeline and vision of connectedness amidst the grinding isolation. In a spirit of cautious optimism that better times lurk around a corner or two, these are the first (and hopefully last) annual Pandemic Awards for Jazz and Beyond.
The World Catches Up: Award: After three decades soaring around the Bay Area jazz scene, soul-powered Oakland jazz vocalist Kenny Washington earned a Grammy nomination with his first studio album under his own name, “What’s the Hurry?,” a relaxed and confidently swinging set of standards featuring Los Angeles pianist Josh Nelson and the Bay Area’s Gary Brown (bass) and Lorca Hart (drums).
The Catalog? I Got Your Catalog Award: Long before Venezuelan-born Emeryville pianist/composer Edward Simon started his ongoing run in the SFJazz Collective, he released a series of exceptional albums melding jazz and Latin American rhythms for small, poorly distributed labels. The two-disc anthology “25” makes an incontrovertible case that he’s been a vanguard figure in jazz’s pan-American expansion.
The Sheila Jordan Award: San Francisco vocalist Noa Levy makes a dazzling debut on the duo session with stellar bassist Shimpei Ogawa, “You Me & Cole,” delivering a set of Cole Porter standards with all the wit and joie de vivre the material requires. She makes the high-wire bass-and-vocals format pioneered by vocal legend Sheila Jordan sound like a cake walk.
The John Santos Award: As a musician, educator, activist and bandleader who embodies integrity and the highest musical values Oakland percussionist John Santos deserves an award in his own image, presented this year in honor of “Art of the Descarga,” his jazz-steeped Smithsonian/Folkways album inspired by his collaborations with pioneering Cuban bassist Israel “Cachao” López (who formulated the jazz-informed, improv-laced descarga format in 1950s Havana).
The Crime Does Pay Award: Refusing to let a crisis go to waste, Oakland’s Jazz Mafia collective has released a steady flow of recordings and videos over the past nine months, including the funk-driven get-out-the-vote collaboration with W. Kamau Bell and Jacob Kornbluth, “Say Something, Do Something,” an eponymous project on Slow & Steady Records by Cosa Nostra Strings (and a companion album of remixes); and most recently “West Oakland Sessions Vol.2.” Going to the mattresses is a whole lot more fun with a hard-grooving Jazz Mafia soundtrack.
The You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet Award: In the weeks before the March shelter in place order came down, Berkeley clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg released the sumptuously lyrical album “Symphony No. 9,” which would have made 2020 a winning year for any artist. But since the initial lockdown he’s written, recorded and posted a new tune almost every day, a beguiling body of work called “Plague Diary” that encompasses more than 200 pieces. You can listen to it all here.
The In Case NASA Needs a Resident Composer Award: Inspired by the whimsical celestial fables of Italian writer Italo Calvino, Berkeley bassist/composer Lisa Mezzacappa wrote a series of antic, playful, and often poignant settings for the album “Cosmicomics,” a project featuring her sextet with guitarist John Finkbeiner, drummer Jordan Glenn, tenor saxophonist Aaron Bennett, vibraphonist Mark Clifford, and Tim Perkis on electronics. Toggling between free improvisation and through-composed passages, her music infuses cosmic musings with human drama.
The Cuba Con Alma Award: After decades of delivering Cuban standards Havana-born Oakland vocalist Bobi Cespedes released her first album focusing on her own songs with “Mujer y Cantante,” a project that combines her deep folkloric roots with her affectionate and often wry view of contemporaryCuban music. Her top-notch band is led by Marco Diaz, a commanding pianist and a warm-toned trumpeter.
The Finger on the Zeitgeist Award: Released within days of the March shelter in place order by the artist-run San Francisco label Slow & Steady, El Cerrito trumpeter Ian Carey’s “Fire In My Head” is a study in tension and release, with his Quintet Plus One deftly navigating his extended forms and dense counter themes. Featuring pianist Adam Shulman, drummer Jon Arkin, bassist Fred Randolph, reed expert Sheldon Brown on bass clarinet, and alto saxophonist Kasey Knudsen, it’s a band brimming with exceptionally expressive players.
The Young Lions Frolic with Old Cats Award: Recorded in October 2008 but not released until June, “6X6” documents an afternoon studio encounter between two avant garde jazz giants — San Jose trumpeter Eddie Gale and Oakland saxophonist Prince Lasha — and four younger colleagues, including saxophonists Howard Wiley and David Boyce, bassist Marcus Shelby, and drummer Darrell Green. Every player contributes a tune, and the volatile music reflects rising spirits days before Barack Obama’s first presidential triumph.
Honorable mentions
Here are another 11 highly recommended 2020 releases
Brian Andres Trio Latino, “Mayan Suite”
Clairdee, “A Love Letter to Lena”
FivePlay, “Summer Dusk: Studio Sessions”
Phillip Greenlief, “Barbedwire: 37 Graphic Scores for Trio, Vol. 1”
Lorca Hart Trio with Ralph Moore, “The Colors of Jazz”
"bad" - Google News
December 30, 2020 at 05:18AM
https://ift.tt/2JssH9x
Bay Area jazz awards 2020: These musicians made great music in a bad year - The Mercury News
"bad" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SpwJRn
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
If you build it, they will come, but they sure as hell are going to complain about everything until they do.
There were millions of bets made in the tech industry last year. Some of those bets involved actual venture capital dollars. Others involved individual decisions on where to live: do you bet on the future of San Francisco or do you want to partake in the growth of some other startup hub? Are you going to launch this new feature in your product or improve one of your existing ones? Do you switch jobs or stay and double down?
Yet, for all those bets, just three seem to have achieved a collective and hysterical frenzy in the industry as we close out this year: a bet on the future of media, a bet on the future of (audio) media, and a bet on the future of one of America’s greatest cities.
Substack, Clubhouse, and Miami as a major tech hub are compelling bets. They are early bets, in the sense that most of the work to actually realize each of their dreams remains to be done. All three are bets of optimism: Substack believes it can rebuild journalism. Clubhouse believes it can reinvent radio with the right interactivity and build a unique social platform. And Miami is a bet that you can take a top global city without a massive startup ecosystem and agglomerate the talent necessary to compete with San Francisco, New York and Boston.
Yet, that optimism is not broadly endorsed by the tech commentariat, who see threats, failures, and barriers from every angle.
I wish I could say it’s just the ennui of an industry in flux given the pandemic and constant cavalcade of chaos and bad news that’s hit us this year. That cynicism, though, has gotten deeper and more entrenched over the past few years even before coronavirus was a trending topic, even as more startups than ever are getting funding (and at better valuations!), even as more startups than ever are exiting, and those exits are collectively larger than ever as we saw earlier this month.
Insecurity is the fabric that runs through most of these bleak analyses. That’s particularly prominent with Substack, which sits at the nexus of insecurity in tech and insecurity in media. The criticism from tech folks seems to basically boil down to “it’s just an email service!” Its simplicity is threatening, since it seems to intimate that anyone could have built a Substack, really anytime in the last decade.
Indeed, they could. Substack is simple in its original product conception, which is a DNA it happens to share with a lot of other successful consumer startups. It is (or perhaps better to say now, was) just email. It’s Stripe + a CMS editor + an email delivery service. A janky version could be written in a day by most competent engineers. And yet. No one else built Substack, and that’s where the insecurity starts in the startup world.
From the media perspective, it’s of course been brutal the last few years in newsrooms and across publishing, so understandably, the level of cynicism in the press is already high (and journalists aren’t exactly optimistic types to begin with). Yet, most of the criticism here basically boils down to “why hasn’t Substack completely stopped the bloodletting of my industry in the short few years it’s been around?”
Maybe they will, but give the folks some god damn time to build. The fact that a young startup is even considered to have the potential to completely rebuild an industry is precisely what makes Substack (and other adjacent startups in its space) such a compelling bet. Substack, today, cannot re-employ tens of thousands of laid-off journalists, or fix the inequality in news coverage or industry demographics, or end the plight of “fake news.” But what about a decade from now if they keep growing on this trajectory and stay focused on building?
The cynicism of immediate perfection is one of the strange dynamics of startups in 2020. There is this expectation that a startup, with one or a few founders and a couple of employees, is somehow going to build a perfect product on day one that mitigates any potential problem even before it becomes one. Maybe these startups are just getting popularized too early, and the people who understand early product are getting subsumed by the wider masses who don’t understand the evolution of products?
This pattern is obvious in the case of Clubhouse, the drama aspects we have mostly managed to avoid at TechCrunch. It’s a new social platform, with new social dynamics. No one understands what it’s going to become in the next few years. Not Paul Davison (who might, even so, have a dream of where he wants to take it), not Clubhouse’s investors, and certainly not its users. This past week, Clubhouse hosted a live Lion King musical event with thousands of participants. Who had that on their bingo board?
Are there problems with Substack and Clubhouse? For sure. But as early companies, they have the obligation to explore the terrain of what they are building, find the key features that compel users to these platforms, and ultimately find their growth formula. There will be problems — trust and safety chief among them, particularly given the nature of user-contributed content. No startup has ever been founded, however, that didn’t uncover problems along its journey. The key question we must ask is whether these companies have the leadership to fix them as they continue building. My sense — and hypothetical bet — is yes.
Talking about leadership, that leads us to Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, whose single tweet offering to help has sparked the most absurd kerfuffle of San Francisco lovers and vitriolic pessimists the world over right now.
Keith Rabois and a few other VCs and founders are trailblazing a trail from San Francisco to Miami, linking up with the local industry to try to build something new and better than what existed before. It’s a bet on a place — an optimistic one — that the power of startups and tech can migrate outside of its central hubs.
What’s strange is that the cynicism around Miami here seems even less warranted than it did a decade ago. While San Francisco and distantly New York and Boston remain the clear hubs of tech startups in the U.S., cities like Salt Lake, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Philadelphia and more have started to score some serious points. Is it really so hard to believe that Miami, a metro region of 5.5 million and one of the largest regional economies in the United States, might actually succeed as well? Maybe it literally just required a few major VCs to show up to catalyze the revolution.
Nothing got built by cynicism. “You can’t do it!” has never created a company, except perhaps to trigger a founder to start something in revolt at the fusillade of negativity.
It takes time though to build. It takes time to take an early product and grow it. It takes time to build a startup ecosystem and expand it into something self-sustaining. Perhaps most importantly, it takes extraordinary effort and hard work, and not just from singular individuals but a whole team and community of people to succeed. The future is malleable — and bets do pay off. So we all need to stop asking what’s the problem and pointing out flaws, and perhaps ask, what future are we building toward? What’s the bet I’m willing to back?
USA. Taxes. Redistribution. Incentives. Subsidies.
Just a few memes to kick things off.
Patricia Suzanne (commentary, Dec. 5) has asked why she or her family should pay for someone else’s education, or relieve a loan granted.
It’s simple. This is America. Part of our Constitution allows for the “common defense and the general welfare” to be funded by acts of Congress. And to remind her, once she writes that check to the U.S. Treasury, it is no longer “her” money.
USA subsidizes coal, amounting to about $112 billion last year. This did not help the industry as several of them have entered bankruptcy. Money down the drain. I personally did not like that.
We can fund subsidies for farmers, amounting to about $22 billion last year. We pay them not to grow. Hmmm. Don’t like that, either.
We can subsidize DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which (for unclassified programs) was around $100 billion, partially funding many defense companies like Raytheon or Northrop Grumman. Estimates are that some 40% of DARPA research money is never brought into any kind of physical or virtual usage. About $40 billion, gone. Don’t like this either, but at least we got a 60% effectiveness.
Patricia Suzanne neglects mention of these varying subsidies and the waste they represent.
Eventually, every dole from USA finds its way into someone’s hands. Along the way, common citizens benefit. Congress acts in our interest, and tolerates the waste in order to confer benefits, and to invest in this country for its continued vigor and to foster USA’s competitive advantage.
No matter what someone pursues, or what they intend to achieve, as a citizen they are due consideration, equally, for the potential merit and contribution they can make to our nation, whether they are farmers, coal miners, undergrads or engineers. There will be good ones and bad ones, successes and failures. Scoundrels and saints.
It is Patricia Suzanne’s opinion that education is apparently an unworthy pursuit. Not worthy of investment. She attacks the pursuit of profession itself.
Imagine a “professional,” of any stripe — plumber, electrician, gardener, engineer, businessman, politician — actually making that claim, that learning and training are unworthy, worthless.
Such a person would necessarily need to reject their own training, reject their capacity to “profess” as illegitimate.
PSYC Aims to Co-Develop Digital Mental Health Platform Through JV Partnership
LAS VEGAS, NV, Dec. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Trac Solutions, Inc. (OTCPink: PSYC) (“Global” “PSYC” or the “Company”) a digital media leader within the emerging sector of medicinal psychedelics, is pleased to announce that the Company has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with PsycheDev Inc. (“PsycheDev”), a Canadian based start-up company focused on the development and deployment of technology-driven mental wellness-enhancing solutions.
In effect, the execution of the MOU outlines the general terms to be applied by each of the respective companies in entering into advanced discussions surrounding the intended establishment of a Joint Venture Partnership Agreement (the “JV”) which will focus on the effective co-development and launch of the PsycheDev platform and app. Furthermore, it is the intent of PSYC, via the anticipated execution of a JV, to acquire an equity stake in PsycheDev through a capital investment and to work alongside the company’s Founder and CEO, Justin Roy, to bring their cutting-edge digital mental health platform to market during the latter quarters of 2021. No assurances can be provided that the JV will be consummated or that the underlying business will be profitable.
“We are extremely pleased to advance our discussions with PsycheDev through the execution of this MOU,” said Global Trac Solutions, Inc. CEO, David Flores. “Our collective focus over the next several days will be to meticulously work through the process of finalizing a JV Partnership Agreement with them so that we can formally begin collaboration efforts. In my opinion, this represents a unique, exciting, and value-driven opportunity for PSYC to collaborate on the development of this highly intriguing early-stage concept and position ourselves to enter the burgeoning sector of digital mental health.”
“We are very glad to collaborate with a team that has the same vision for mental health’s future,” said PsycheDev Inc. Founder and CEO, Justin Roy. “We must join forces to work on building a healthier society and this partnership will bring us one step closer by helping us make the serious, therapeutic use of plant medicine much more accessible. This means a lot, as Global Trac Solutions will go a long way in helping us bring better quality solutions to people much faster.”
“We are currently in the midst of an evolution of digital tools that are transforming society’s approach to mental health and wellbeing,” said Flores. “I truly believe that by combining Mr. Roy’s vision for PsycheDev with the business development and go-to-market experience and knowledge the PSYC team has to offer, we have the potential of bringing a truly unique and highly-beneficial digital resource to the masses.”
About Global Trac Solutions, Inc. (OTCPink: PSYC)
At Global Trac Solutions we are integrating media, creativity, and technology to develop and deploy thought-provoking ideas and solutions that are fostering and transforming the approach to some of society’s most pressing matters.
PSYC has expressed its intent and commitment to positioning itself at the forefront of the psychedelic revolution and as a resource center for discovering and understanding the latest research and business opportunities surrounding psychedelic inspired medicines. In conjunction with the FDA’s more open-minded approach to psychedelic medicines, and as several major U.S. cities continue to approve the decriminalization of psilocybin, investors are speculating that the psychedelic boom could be bigger than that of cannabis. PSYC is your source for current investment related news specific to psychedelic medicines and cutting-edge research improving overall health, moving this sector into the mainstream.
We believe in a forward-thinking approach that embraces groundbreaking new technology and innovations and through the vision of business development we intend to continue to evolve into these unchartered territories as the industry leaders of the future. We truly are the right TRAC to follow.
Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer:
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "ongoing," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "will," "would," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which such performance or results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time the statements are made and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainty and other factors, including the effect of COVID-19, that may cause our results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements in this press release. This press release should be considered in light of all filings of the Company that are disclosed on the OTC Markets.com website.
Disclaimer: Global Trac Solutions, Inc. does not in any way encourage or condone the use, purchase, sale or transfer of any illegal substances, nor do we encourage or condone partaking in any unlawful activities. We support a harm reduction approach for the purpose of education and promoting individual and public safety. If you are choosing to use psychedelic substances, please do so responsibly.
"Startup" - Google News
December 29, 2020 at 08:30PM
https://ift.tt/2JqtVCa
PSYC Executes MOU With Digital Mental Health Startup, PsycheDev Inc. - GlobeNewswire
"Startup" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MXTQ2S
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
