Notations From the Grid (Special Mid-Week Edition); On Media Watch

 We hereby present the following courtesy the Team at the Information that is a must read for us:

 

EXCLUSIVE COVID-19 STARTUPS Covid Test Startup Cue Health in Talks for $2 Billion-Plus Valuation By Kate Clark Cue Health, a startup that makes handheld coronavirus tests, is in discussion with investors about a new round of capital that could boost the company’s valuation to more than $2 billion, or at least four times the valuation in a fundraising just six months ago, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The San Diego startup’s molecular diagnostic technology delivers test results to its accompanying mobile app in as little as 20 minutes, leading to deals with the Defense Department and the National Basketball Association. The new capital would help it expand manufacturing of its test cartridges as coronavirus deaths in the U.S. surge. Cue’s quick pace of capital raising is the latest sign of an investor stampede toward startups whose business has accelerated during the pandemic.    READ THE FULL STORY

EXCLUSIVE ENTERTAINMENT WarnerMedia Considering CNN Streaming Service By Jessica Toonkel AT&T’s WarnerMedia, long a giant in cable TV, was a late arrival to streaming video. Under its new CEO, Jason Kilar, Warner is trying to make up for lost time. Warner executives are discussing launching two new streaming services. One would be a subscription offering based on content from CNN and could launch next year. Another would be a free service carrying programming from its entertainment cable channels TBS and TNT as well as the Warner Bros. film library, said people familiar with the situation. The free entertainment service is very early in the planning and likely wouldn’t launch until 2022, if at all. The two possible services would be in addition to HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s flagship streaming service, which launched last May, and a forthcoming ad-supported version of HBO Max that the company has said will launch next year.    READ THE FULL STORY

Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): On The State of the Media Industry

Our team received this from the Daily KOS that underscores the challenges of the Media Industry this week.     We remain hopeful about the opportunity and the possibility to make a difference:

pandemic-related job losses continue to ravage the media industry.

Earlier this month, ESPN and WarnerMedia both announced hundreds of layoffs. These job losses compound what has already been a brutal year in the media industry. In just the first six months of 2020, 11,000 newsroom jobs vanished. Times were difficult even for employees at media organizations who kept their jobs, as tens of thousands suffered paycuts and furloughs. Scores of media outlets, especially local outlets, have closed up shop entirely.

If Daily Kos were to shut down--as has happened to other progressive media outlets, such as Think Progress in 2019 and most of the original progressive blogosphere a few years earlier--it's a good bet that nothing would ever take our place. This is because, whether we like it or not, journalism and publishing are shrinking. Eyeballs and advertising dollars that once went to support journalists and publishers are now flowing, in ever-increasing amounts, to Facebook, Google, and Amazon, which collectively account for almost 70% of all digital ad spending. We live in an age where social media networks owned by gigantic corporations are crowding out any space that, in a different era, new publishers might have been able to occupy.

Despite this, at Daily Kos we have not only survived 2020, but we have thrived without layoffs, paycuts or furloughs. How? Simply put, because we do things differently than every other media organization in the country:

• Small donations from our community of readers and activists are our largest source of income. This makes us accountable to our grassroots donors, rather than to big corporate advertisers or a small number of wealthy contributors.

• Daily Kos takes sides in the fights we write about, rather than just explaining the news or promoting a false balance. For example, we signed up over 100,000 volunteers to help get out the Democratic vote in 2020 and protect the results of the election afterward. Also, in September and October, we generated over 1.1 million grassroots actions in a valiant attempt to stop Republicans from filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court. We are here to fight back, which is why we always provide immediate, impactful ways for our readers to take action on the news they are reading.

• We give our community a real voice. This means not only letting readers post comments, but giving them the ability to publish their own articles--and even to determine which community article appears high up on the front page of our website for an extended period of time. In fact, many of our most widely read articles are written by our community!

There is nothing else like Daily Kos anywhere else in the media landscape: participatory, grassroots-funded, news you can do something about. We can--and will--survive and thrive as long as our small donors continue to support us.


Keep fighting,
Chris Bowers
Executive Campaign Director, Daily Kos

A Day In The Life Of A Stoic | Ryan Holiday | Stoicism

Notations From the Grid (W-End Edition): The President of @Moderna Gives a Crash Course on #COVID-19 Vaccines

Notations From the Grid (Special Friday Edition): On The Rise of China

 This is courtesy the Financial Times of London:

myFT Instant Alert Economy China aims to shake US grip on chip design tools Synopsys and Cadence veterans join local start-ups in Beijing tech push DECEMBER 3, 2020 by Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, Nikkei staff writers

#RandomThoughts Re @realDonaldTrump

 

Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): As We Look To 2021

 2021 is before Us.    The Economist's @KalToons share some thoughts on What 2021 entails:

On This Thanksgiving Eve In The United States...

  

On this Thanksgiving Eve here in the United States, we hereby present this courtesy the team at The Atlantic as we wish all a Happy Thanksgiving here in the United States:

9 Poems for a Tough Winter

(Matt Black/Magnum)

“SO PENSEROSO” BY OGDEN NASH (AUDIO VERSION)

I do not wish to be blithe, / I wish to recoil and writhe. / I will revel in cosmic woe, / And I want my woe to show. This one will straighten you out. The great Ogden Nash, 1902–71, was a fiercely innovative poet who consecrated his art to the entertainment of the masses—and carried on being fiercely innovative. No one was wittier, no one was more verbally adroit, yet he had no meanness or spikiness; he was adored by that shy beast, the general reader. “So Penseroso” is a loving, piercing send-up of a certain strain of indulgent melancholia—to which we’re all prone right now, let’s face it. You will feel both accurately diagnosed and much, much better.

— James Parker, staff writer

“MY HOUSE” BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

I’ve always loved the rhythm of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry, how she seems to punctuate her flow with whispered asides. Throughout “My House,” she wonders aloud whether it might be a silly poem but keeps going anyway. That gentle musing mirrors her conclusion about the titular house and the warmth of the domestic sphere: Flawed or inconsequential though it may seem to others, this space is all Nikki’s—and being invited into it is no small thing.

— Hannah Giorgis, staff writer covering culture

“CALIFORNIA WINTER” BY KARL SHAPIRO

One of my forever favorites is Karl Shapiro’s “California Winter,” a marvelous ode to the land of the oldest living things, / trees that were young when Pharoahs ruled the world, / trees whose new leaves are only just unfurled. I like best to read it through the eyes of Joan Didion, who writes about California like no one else, and who mentions Shapiro’s poem in The White Album. She rightly points out that its last stanza possesses the rare and quiet power of a prayer.

— Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor

“SEEING OFF MENG HAORAN FOR GUANGLING AT YELLOW CRANE TOWER” BY LI BAI

When I was a kid, my mom taught me Mandarin by having me recite classical poetry. I understood little and memorized a lot, and two decades on, I find I remember most of what I learned. But I now revisit these verses with an added layer of nostalgia: The lonely sail, a faraway shadow, against an endless blue / I only see the Yangtze flowing into the horizon, goes one. The permutations of translation are infinite, frustrating, time-consuming (this one is mine; I’m no scholar and no poet). This pandemic winter, go memorize some stuff as an exercise. Translate, if you can, for fun, and for no one but yourself.

— Shan Wang, senior editor

“WILD GEESE” BY MARY OLIVER

Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” is my ultimate comfort poem; I go back to it again and again when I’m feeling despondent or defeated. You could argue this isn’t the right moment for the first line—You do not have to be good. (You do have to be good! Cancel Thanksgiving!) But the poem doesn’t feel indulgent to me as much as it feels merciful: Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. / Meanwhile the world goes on. It reminds me that this long pandemic winter will be only a blip in the vast span of the Earth’s history.

— Faith Hill, assistant editor who helps select our Atlantic weekly poem

“AFTER ABOLITION” BY KYLE CARRERO LOPEZ

In a social and political moment in which more people are discussing what role, if any, prisons and police should have in our society, I find that art can help us move our thinking away from what we believe is possible, and toward what we believe we deserve. Kyle Carrero Lopez’s poem “After Abolition” helps me dream of what it might mean to build the sort of country in which the instruments of our carceral state are pushed toward obsolescence. I will be rereading it for years to come.

— Clint Smith, staff writer and the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent

“THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS” BY ROBERT HAYDEN

I raise the blinds. I lower the blinds. I raise. I lower. My son and I rise; my son and I set. I run school, I work, I single parent. I think of my single mother’s thankless hours; I call: What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices? As days shorten, how do we keep going? Hayden’s poem of winter mornings seems bleak, yet his last line answers: love.

—Jennifer Adams, associate director of production

“FIRST FALL,” BY MAGGIE SMITH

You might know Smith from her poem “Good Bones,” which went viral in 2016 and gets shared on social media whenever the world’s feeling particularly grim. My favorite of hers is “First Fall,” in which a mother shows her newborn the changing leaves. The first time you see / something die, you won’t know it might / come back, she says. As this hard winter sets in, the poem reminds me that I’m old enough to know leaves grow back. But I’m most comforted by the fierce hope of the narrator, speaking to the baby on her chest: I’m desperate for you / to love the world because I brought you here.

— Isabel Fattal, assistant editor

“SORROW IS NOT MY NAME,” BY ROSS GAY

When happiness feels out of reach, I turn to this Ross Gay poem. I love how the title boldly sweeps away feelings of heaviness before moving into a tender meditation on life’s delights. I want to look at the world as Gay does: appreciating the two million naturally occurring sweet things instead of just pondering the skeleton in the mirror. Sometimes, making that choice seems impossible, but Gay reminds me that there is a time for everything—including joy.

— Morgan Ome, assistant editor

Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): As #POTUS46 Forms His Government

 We present some perspective courtesy the Fortune's Alan Murray as we also note a look to the future as well:

November 24, 2020

Good morning.

I’m delighted my former macroeconomics professor, Janet Yellen, appears to be Biden’s choice for Treasury Secretary. It was long ago (London School of Economics, 1979-80), but her crystal-clear and dispassionate explanations of macro principles still stick in my mind today.

More relevant, of course, was her performance as chair of the Federal Reserve, which won near universal praise, both in the U.S. and abroad. As a professor, she taught that lower unemployment would lead to rising inflation—the fabled Phillips curve. But as head of the Fed, she was willing to abandon theory when the evidence for it collapsed. She cares deeply about the fate of left-behind workers and laid the groundwork for the monetary policies of her successor, Jerome Powell, that helped those workers in the years leading up to the pandemic. At Treasury, she will have a broader range of tools to both keep the economy growing and help those left behind. Teamed with Powell, they should give business and markets confidence that steady hands are on the tiller.

Separately, there’s a report out this morning from the McKinsey Global Institute shedding new light on the future of remote work. It finds that 20% of the work force in developed countries can work remotely 3-5 days a week as effectively as if they were working in an office. That suggest three to four times as many people may work from home in the future as did pre-COVID.

The effect varies by industry and country. Finance and insurance have the highest work-from-home potential (76% without any productivity loss), which is why the U.K. also ranks high (33% without productivity loss.) The U.S. comes in at 29%, while China is only 16% and India 12%.

The flip side of that story is that more than half the workforce in every country—including 61% in the U.S.—don’t have an option of working from home, because their jobs involve handling equipment, moving objects, selling, teaching, caring for others, etc. One side effect is that remote work “may increase gender disparity,” the report says, because “the female workforce in many economies is more highly concentrated in occupational clusters like healthcare, food services, and customer service.” You can read the full report here.

...... And check out my interview with Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown, who is determined to wean the world from meat. He’s making some surprising progress—including in China. You can listen on Apple or Spotify.



Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

Notations From the Grid (Special Friday Edition): Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 1 v 3

Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): On @BarackObama: The 2020 60 Minutes interview

7 Things The Stoics Can Teach Us In 2020 | Ryan Holiday | Stoicism

Notations From the Grid (Special Edition): On this #VeteransDay In the US & #ArmisticeDay

 

We Salute all who have served:

 

When you see someone in a uniform,

Someone who serves us all,

Doing military duty,

Answering their country’s call,

Take a moment to thank them

For protecting what you hold dear;

Tell them you are proud of them;

Make it very clear.

Just tap them on the shoulder,

Give a smile, and say,

“Thanks for what you’re doing

To keep us safe in the USA!”

By Joanna Fuchs

As a New Day Dawns in America: Remembering....

 

 

Live: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris Deliver Address To The Nation | NBC News

Notations From the Grid (Special Edition): #RandomThoughts

 We hereby present a series of thoughts to hopefully uplift all:

Notations From the Grid (Special #Election2020 Eve Edition): On a Window Into the Future

 

We postponed our plans to be "dark" due to the on-going developments throughout our World as we released updates on all our properties over the ensuing days.

We wanted to make sure that we noted that we look forward to being back online after the US Election--our Daily Paper produced for us by the team @Paper_Li will be available on our Twitter Corner @DailyOutsider throughout the election cycle. Please #staysafe #wearamask and Don't Forget to #vote

We leave all with the following :