ITK Daily | October 20

Happy Thursday.

To be ITK, know this:

AP: Truss quits, but UK’s political and economic turmoil persist

CNN: Liz Truss’ resignation leaves a party in tatters and a nation in despair

The Times: Liz Truss resigns as PM with new leader by next Friday

+ @Independent: Liz Truss resigns as prime minister: 'I cannot deliver on mandate I was elected with'

The leadership voting will continue until morale improves...

Lettuce 2022!

I guess the lettuce won.

1922 Committee... "Trust us, we don't know either. We are just making this up by the hour."

Westminster...

Greece and Italy's governing charm with the culinary delights of meat pies and mushy peas.

How it started...

- Brexit

How it's going...

- Britaly

Political communications lessons from Liz Truss:

- Never had a mandate

- Failed to stop campaigning when she secured No. 10

- Conservative Party is exhausted and out of ideas

- Most Tory MPs are more concerned about careers and paying their mortgages (poor reasons to be an elected official)

- Democracy never rests

Xi Jinping: China’s everlasting emperor awaits his third term: The president has sidelined rivals and abandoned collective leadership to reign alone and unchallenged. Tom Mitchell

+ [Xi] stands alone at the top of Chinese politics in a way that no other “paramount leader” has done since the party’s revolutionary hero, Mao Zedong.

Analysis: Xi's coronation ceremony opens on date of China's first atom bomb: Reaffirming Taiwan unification, leader makes his third term play amid economic downturn. Nikkei

+ Xi Jinping chose Oct. 16, the day China successfully conducted its first nuclear test in 1964, to open the Chinese Communist Party's 20th National Congress.

+ For China, possessing an atomic bomb meant being able to counter American imperialism and Soviet hegemonism.

+ All in all, the national congress was confronted with certain realities. While Xi still wants to build a nation that can counter the US on all fronts, the economy is stuck in the doldrums with declining growth -- neither of which is going away any time soon.

Containing China is Biden’s explicit goal: US efforts to isolate Beijing’s high-tech sector may accelerate Xi Jinping’s bid to take control of Taiwan. Edward Luce

+ "Imagine that a superpower declared war on a great power and nobody noticed. Joe Biden this month launched a full-blown economic war on China — all but committing the US to stopping its rise — and for the most part, Americans did not react."

+ "It is not clear that corporate America, or its foreign counterparts, have fully digested what is about to hit them. For decades, serious businesses have based their growth models on having a China strategy — whether it be by exporting to China, or producing there, or both."

+ "America’s conversion to China containment is bipartisan."

+ "The hit to China’s economy will be far bigger than the word “semiconductor” implies. Biden’s move draws on the premise that any advanced chip can be used by China’s military, including for nuclear weapon and hypersonic missile development. It is also meant to undercut China’s goal of dominating global artificial intelligence by 2030."

+ "Will Biden’s gamble work? I’m not relishing the prospect of finding out. For better or worse, the world has just changed with a whimper not a bang. Let us hope it stays that way."

NPR: Enrollment in Korean classes has shot up. Thank K-pop

+ College student enrollment in language classes has plateaued in recent years, but enrollment in Korean language classes rose 78% from 2009 to 2016.

It makes you wonder why the CCP hasn't launched a C-pop effort.

‘Yankees, go home!’: Seoul gets squeezed between the US and China: The intensifying rivalry between Washington and Beijing is causing jitters in South Korea, where security ties and economic priorities are not always aligned. NYT

+ Most South Koreans who oppose the expanding US military base and the Thaad system fear their country being caught in the rivalry between the United States and China.

索尼 -Honda team takes on Apple in software auto evolution: Nikkei reports the unusual pair seeks to drive platform-based business for vehicles.

Fortune: 高盛 ’ anti-remote-work CEO has almost brought office work back to pre-pandemic levels—but insists he ‘doesn’t want rules’

KKR plans to invest more in Japan, taking advantage of a cheaper yen and lower company valuations.

Zoom , Teams, Slack are wreaking havoc on employee productivity: Shifting between multiple apps to get stuff done drains workers’ time, efficiency, and engagement. Can anything be done? Bloomberg

+ Companies deployed 89 different apps on average last year, up from 58 in 2015, according to Okta, a cloud software company. At large employers, that figure is now 187.

+ Of those apps, close to 30% are duplicative or add no value, according to a survey of senior business leaders by WalkMe, an enterprise software provider.

+ A recent study of 20 teams across three big employers found that workers toggled between different apps and websites 1,200 times each day. That’s just under four hours a week, or roughly five weeks a year, spent hitting the Alt-Tab key.

+ The researchers dubbed it the “toggling tax,” but it’s better known among psychologists as context switching — a habit that makes it hard to focus and, over time, stresses us out.

The psychology of epiphanies: You might have been told off for staring out the window at school, but psychology shows us it's one of the best ways to spark new ideas and have epiphanies. DW

+ According to a study from 2022, the best tasks for sparking new ideas are ?mindless? tasks that are engaging but not boring — things like walking, showering or knitting, as opposed to watching a boring video or doomscrolling on social media.

+ Experts say that the repetitive movements of tasks help the mind to wander and create free connections between ideas. It's the same for walking, which Aristotle, William Wordsworth and Friedrich Nietzsche all said was their best time for thinking.

+ Epiphanies aren't just about scientific discoveries. We all have lightbulb moments and ideas about our own lives from time to time, and they happen in much the same way as these great thinkers.'

Voters’ outlook on the economy has darkened over the past year: The latest survey from Morning Consult / POLITICO shows that 53% of voters now say they believe the economy will be worse off 12 months from now, up from 47% approximately one year ago.

Midterms: Democrats overtaken by the cost of living: Le Monde reports as the elections approach, several opinion polls confirm that inflation is the dominant issue among US voters, who are more likely to trust Republicans on economic issues.

Comedy Central is exploring the idea of rotating hosts after Trevor Noah leaves "The Daily Show" in December, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Americans reclaim 60 million commuting hours in remote-work perk: Instead of being stuck in traffic, workers are getting more rest and spending additional time with family. Bloomberg

+ Even as many companies coax their staff back into the office, about 15% still work entirely remotely and 30% have a hybrid schedule, according to research by Stanford University professor Nick Bloom.

+ “If you spend 9-to-5, or however many hours a day you're working, on super energy-draining activities, it doesn't really matter how many hours you log — you're not going to be high-performing and you're not going to be engaged.”

Is West Seattle the rock ’n’ roll capital of Seattle? The Seattle Times

+ West Seattle is crawling with local rock stars, artists, and music biz shakers whose fingerprints are all over the past, present, and future of the city’s musical identity.

+ “You can talk about Eddie Vedder moving here, and I think that’s important,but I also think that there are a lot of things that just make the soil more fertile for musical creation and that’s really one of them.”

New European Super League boss eyes kick-off in 3 years with different format: Contentious breakaway football competition pledges to consider all options after collapsing of the original project. FT

+ A22 Sports Management, a company representing the Super League clubs, is planning to revive the competition and has appointed Bernd Reichart, a German media executive, as its new chief executive.

+ “We want to reach out to stakeholders in the European football community and broaden this vision. Even fans will have a lot of sympathy for the idea,” Reichart told the Financial Times. “It is a blank slate. Format will never be an obstacle.”

The Super League is going to happen, eventually, And there will be teams based in North America.

Coupe du monde: One month until the World Cup.

PGA TOUR boosts 2023 purses for four events in LIV-fight revamp: AFP reports next year's Phoenix Open, Heritage tournament, Wells Fargo Championship, and Travelers Championship will have purses boosted to $20 million and guaranteed appearances by top golfers, the US PGA Tour announced Wednesday.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

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