The scourge of wellness, business tips from a refugee camp, and the weirdest proposal ever
“You have, in your body, one of the most incredibly intricate detoxing systems that exists: Your liver regulates glucose, protein, and fat levels, removes ammonia from the body, as well as alcohol and some drugs. The rest of the heavy lifting is done by your kidneys, processing drugs with an intricate system of enzymes, balancing your body’s water levels, salts, excreting waste right into your bladder.” So, if your body is built to detox, why do you need expensive wellness products to help the process along? The short answer is that you don’t. But wellness solutions from cleanses to crystals and salt lamps have been around for decades. And as we’ve repeatedly seen, the Internet is the ultimate enabler of all things fake. Here’s Outline on the sickening business of wellness and the scams meant to cure you of your money.
Got Milk?
Want to avoid talking politics? Forget it. It’s everywhere. And it starts with your morning bowl of cereal. From WaPo: When even Frosted Flakes are political, where does that leave us as a country? (Cap’n Crunch wouldn’t make a bad head of the FDA — though he’d have a better chance if he were a general.)
Goodbye from Aleppo
The fall of Aleppo to Assad looks like it will hold a tragic ending to an already brutal story for civilians still in the city. “The UN children’s agency cited a doctor as saying a building housing as many as 100 unaccompanied children was under heavy attack.” And that’s just one example in the city where Syrian pro-government forces have been killing people, including women and children, on the spot.
+ “Humans all over the world, don’t sleep! You can do something, protest now! Stop the genocide.” From BBC: The final goodbyes from a city under siege.
+ One of most popular memes of the year was the ongoing discussion of how awful 2016 has been. In some places, 2016 really was epically bad. From Buzzfeed: This Is What Aleppo Looked Like This Year.
Moscow Mos Def
“Like another famous American election scandal, it started with a break-in at the D.N.C. The first time, 44 years ago at the committee’s old offices in the Watergate complex, the burglars planted listening devices and jimmied a filing cabinet. This time, the burglary was conducted from afar, directed by the Kremlin, with spear-phishing emails and zeros and ones.” From the NYT’s Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger and Scott Shane, The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. While this is being discussed in a hyper-partisan framework today, it’s critical we move beyond that. This is a national security issue.
Deus Exxon Machina
President-elect Trump made his State Dept pick official on Tuesday as he named ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson as the nation’s top diplomat. Tillerson will face confirmation obstacles connected to his dealings with Moscow, but he has the backing of some top GOP players. From NPR: What We Know About Rex Tillerson.
+ Tillerson has no government experience, but as Ben Casselman explains, the his current gig and his next one are not unrelated: Rex Tillerson is Already a Diplomat — For Exxon Mobil’s Shareholders.
+ Rick Perry once famously forgot the name of the Energy Department when he was listing entities he planned to shutter if elected president. As of today, he’s slated to be that agency’s next leader.
+ From The Texas Tribune: Rick Perry’s energy legacy is more complicated than you think. (For example, he’s on the board of the company trying to build the Dakota Access Pipeline.)
+ In other news, Kanye.
Should They Stay or Should They Go?
It’s no secret that Donald Trump didn’t get a lot of support from tech luminaries during the election. So it’s with some discomfort that folks in the Valley watch their leaders head to Trump Tower for a meeting with the prez-elect. Kara Swisher gave voice to that discomfort in a widely-read piece: As Trumplethinskin lets down his hair for tech, shame on Silicon Valley for climbing the Tower in silence.
+ My gut tells me that shareholder value, more than patriotism, is the motivation that drove many tech execs to accept the invitation. And that points to a much broader issue and an entirely new reality. Here’s my take: Do They Have to Go?
Startup Here
“Companies sprang up everywhere: by the time the camp was two years old it had more than 1,400 firms. They have continued to be founded at an incredible rate. I quizzed its butchers and bakers on what makes a successful business.” The Economist with some business tips from a refugee camp.
Barry’s Bond
“There are no clean victories for black people, nor, perhaps, for any people. The presidency of Barack Obama is no different. One can now say that an African American individual can rise to the same level as a white individual, and yet also say that the number of black individuals who actually qualify for that status will be small. One thinks of Serena Williams, whose dominance and stunning achievements can’t, in and of themselves, ensure equal access to tennis facilities for young black girls. The gate is open and yet so very far away.” In The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on the Obama era: My President Was Black. Interestingly, the prospect of a black president seemed almost impossible just a few years before Obama. And in some ways, it feels even more impossible now.
For Old Times’ Sake
In San Diego, a non-profit organization is building “a faux town of 24 buildings, arranged around a central green and designed to evoke the era when most of today’s dementia patients were young adults.” Can environmental reminders of the past help sharpen the minds of Alzheimer’s patients?
Bottom of the News
“There, she found three Mobile police officers surrounding McPherson and his motorcycle at a gas pump, with what appeared to be guns drawn and pointed at her boyfriend.” And thus began the weirdest proposal I’ve ever seen.
+ PSA: If you encounter a dentist who makes house calls, be afraid.
+ McSweeney’s: “I know I said ten minutes ago that I’m taking a social media break, but I just made The. Best. Avocado. Toast.”
