ITK Daily | August 29
Pop quiz: Can you name the city in the header photo?
Artemis launch: NASA scrubs launch of its new moon rocket on a no-crew test flight because of fuel leaks.
+ @W7VOA: Earliest possible next launch window would be 12:48 EDT (16:48 UTC) on Friday, Sept. 2nd, according to @NASA
+ @phildstewart: The SLS is considered the world’s most complex and powerful rocket, and the biggest the space agency has built since the Saturn V rockets flown during its Apollo Moon program of the 1960s and 1970s.
Read this: Six months of war in Ukraine: ‘The enemy learned fast’: There is stalemate across the front line as Moscow and Kyiv prepare for the conflict to drag on into winter. FT
+ Both sides are at a stalemate across much of the 2,400km front line and Russian forces are entrenching themselves for the winter ahead
+ So far, about 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war, the army chief said this week. In July, the CIA said at least 15,000 Russian troops had been killed
Read this: Xi Jinping’s radical secrecy: This is not just a challenge for biographers. It makes China harder to predict and the world more dangerous. Richard McGregor
+ Xi Jinping has never given a press conference
+ China's Communist Party is a colossal, sprawling political machine with 96.7 million members
SCMP: Changing of China’s diplomatic guard on agenda for this year’s party congress
+ Foreign policy supremo Yang Jiechi is expected to step down from Politburo at age of 72
+ Foreign Minister Wang Yi could step up to replace him, but age norms pose a hurdle
Read this: China’s growth sacrifice: For four decades, rapid economic growth was the prime imperative of China's communist leaders. President Xi Jinping, by contrast, is prepared to forego growth in the interest of cementing the Party's political power and pursuing his Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. Stephen S. Roach
+ Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, economic growth has mattered more than anything for China’s leaders
+ The 10% annualized hyper-growth from 1980 to 2010 was widely seen as the antidote to the relative stasis of the Mao era when the economy grew by only about 6%
+ The China slowdown is far more than an arithmetic event. Three powerful forces are also at work – a structural transformation of the economy, payback for past excesses, and a profound shift in the ideological underpinnings of Chinese governance
+ Xi’s focus on ideology speaks much more to the resurrection of Mao’s legacy than to continuity with the Deng era
+ Unlike the China of Mao, when there wasn’t much growth to sacrifice, there is far more at stake today for the world’s second-largest economy
Read this: What kind of great power will India become? Three books offer insights into New Delhi’s relationship with the US and China — and ask where the rising nation will go from here. FT
+ Within the next decade, India is likely to overtake Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy
+ India’s view of its place in the world draws on ideas formed either in antiquity or after 1947
See this: Visualized: The state of central bank digital currencies Visual Capitalist
+ Digital currencies have been around since the 1980s but didn’t become widely popular until the launch of Bitcoin in 2009
+ 105 countries are currently exploring centralized digital currencies. Together, they represent 95% of global GDP
+ Just 9% of countries have launched a digital currency to date. This includes Nigeria, which became the first African country to do so in October 2021
Read this: Trump is turning the midterms from a referendum into a choice: Republicans could pay a price in November as the former president’s dominance of the party changes the equation for midterm campaigns. Dan Balz
+ American politics can be divided crudely into two eras: BDT and SDT, or Before Donald Trump and Since Donald Trump
+ Trump has been the energizing force in politics since he announced for president in 2015, mobilizing voters behind his candidacy and, once in office, triggering an even bigger backlash against him
+ In 2016, about 137 million Americans voted in the presidential election, compared with around 130 million in 2008 and 2012. In 2020, turnout spiked to 158 million
+ Biden got 15.4 million more votes than Hillary Clinton got in 2016, and Trump drew 11.2 million more in 2020 than he got in his first campaign
Read this: Liz Truss’s biggest battle will be with her own party — suffering seller’s remorse over Boris Johnson: After a vicious leadership campaign, the likely winner will still have to convince scores of Tory backbenchers she’s up to the job. The Times
+ Certainly, the leadership contest, pitching Truss’s blunt ideological outspokenness against Rishi Sunak’s technocratic head-boy earnestness, has made the prospects more precarious for whichever one is declared the winner.
+ The Queen is reportedly considering appointing the next prime minister at Balmoral rather than Buckingham Palace.
Read this: Giorgia Meloni: Far-right leader who's favorite to run Italy BBC
+ In 2008, aged 31, Giorgia Meloni became Italy's youngest ever minister, appointed to the Youth and Sport portfolio by Silvio Berlusconi
+ As the only major party to have stayed out of Mario Draghi's national unity coalition government, she is leading the opinion polls at around 25%
领英推荐
+ For her allies now scenting victory, the 45-year-old frontrunner would represent the radical political shift that Italy needs, given its long economic stagnation and society seen as a gerontocracy
Italy votes: The 2022 Italian general election is a snap election due to be held in Italy on September 25.
OTD: In 1997, Netflix was registered as a DVD rental company.
YouTube is America’s most popular podcast platform, capturing 24.2% of listeners compared to Spotify’s 23.8% and Apple’s 16%.
T-Mobile + SpaceX are partnering to offer Starlink satellite connectivity next year. The service will only enable texts at first.
Peloton reported a loss of $1.2B, a drop in revenue and membership, and higher-than-expected churn.
+ @ChrisJBakke: If you’re a startup CEO and don’t listen to your meditation app at 1.5x speed, it’s time to resign. You’re not cut out for the job.
Read this: Billy Reid and Gibson's collab was a lifetime in the making: The designer's been playing guitar pretty much forever, and the new collection shows his love of music—and damn good style—in no uncertain terms. Esquire
Read this: Bright lights, big city, niche fame: As Lower Manhattan’s most infamous publicist, Kaitlin Phillips doesn’t always stay behind the scenes. NYT
+ She describes her professional sweet spot as “very niche famous people,” by which she means people who are interesting to her and to the other people she finds interesting.
+ Phillips represents particularly cool friends for free. Or not exactly free, because what she gets in exchange, sometimes, is stuff— paintings, furniture, meals out — but more commonly, what she gains is the credibility that comes from an association with the galleries and artists and novelists she has decided are hers.
+ Phillips also brags about just failing to show up for work for three months straight because she felt like going to Paris. She wasn’t fired; it was, rather, another deliberate act of personal branding.
Half the world's population lives in just 7 countries:
China 1.4 billion
India 1.4 billion
US 338m
Indonesia 276m
Pakistan 236m
Nigeria 219m
Brazil 215m
Super mama talent | Mary Kay Ziniewicz: On this episode of Brigadoon Radio, Mary Kay Ziniewicz and Marc Ross discuss the future of hiring, recruitment, and workforce management, the untapped talents of mamas, recognizing the lifecycles of families meeting business needs, workforce demographic challenges, building a two-sided marketplace, providing businesses access to off-market talent, and the latest happenings at Bus Stop Mamas. Watch here.
Cow Skull Hill: A backcountry race in Colorado that combines trail running and fly fishing.
Read this: John McEnroe, seriously: On the eve of the US Open, a conversation with the famously stormy NYC tennis legend, the subject of a new Showtime documentary. WSJ
Read this: Power and grit that changed the game: Serena Williams’s legacy is evident in the aggressive, all-action style of play that has become the norm on the women’s tennis tour. NYT
+ “One of the greatest impacts Serena had is she definitely took the game to a different level,” said Mary Joe Fernandez, the ESPN analyst and former WTA star whose playing career overlapped with those of the Williamses.
+ “Serena changed it in different ways, whether physically, mentally or movement-wise. It just got better, and it got better because of Serena and also Venus.”
+ Fernandez, a three-time Grand Slam singles finalist once ranked as high as No. 4, said the Williamses’ emergence contributed to her decision to retire in 2000.
17 spectacular tennis courts around the world: As the US Open gets underway, AD takes a look at the very grounds that host this centuries-old sport, from cliffside clay to sky-high lawns. AD
Field trip idea.
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