The Weekend Edition

A QUICK NOTE TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS

We publish the Enterprise Morning Edition in English and Arabic from Sunday through Thursday before 7am, with a focus on the business, economic and political news that will move markets each day. What you’re reading now is our Weekend Edition, which is light on news and heavy on stories to read, videos to watch, and podcasts to which you may want to listen on Friday and Saturday (that being the weekend for the vast majority of our readers). The Weekend Edition comes out each Friday between 9:00am and 9:30am CLT. We’re in beta and in English only right now.

This morning’s Weekend Edition is a bit shorter than usual — we’re still adjusting to working on (and hiring for) our new GCC Edition. Speaking of which:

** Are you interested in becoming a beta reader of our Gulf Cooperation Council Edition? If you would like to be added as a reader on the upcoming beta version of the Enterprise GCC Edition, please drop us a note at editorial@enterprisemea.com. In the meantime, you can read early examples of the Enterprise GCC Edition here. The current alpha edition is an afternoon product at the moment, but we’ll be shifting to mornings when we formally enter beta in a few of weeks’ time. Comments and criticism are most welcome.

We’ll be back on Sunday at around 6:15am with our usual roundup. Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

Is it really that bad to fall asleep watching television or surfing on your iPad? Common wisdom and a handful of scientific studies say falling asleep bathed in blue light is a fast-track to diabetes, cancer and, well, an early death. Vice’s Motherboard looks at the evidence and finds the case may not be clear-cut at all: “No inpatient sleep studies that I could find or that [Harvard sleep specialist Stuart] Quan has heard of have looked specifically at the relationship between sleep quality and watching TV before bed.” It’s part of the website’s “You’ll sleep when you’re dead” series and concludes that “I’m the only sleep specialist I know of who says it’s OK to fall asleep with the television on … if you’re waking up and feeling refreshed, without aches and pains, those are the measures that matter.” The series also talks to a Vice nightshift editor about his life, asks why different people need different amounts of sleep, and looks at an app that adjusts the color of your screen over time to make it easier for you to sleep. H/t Youssef El-S.

Go right back to sleep: Sleeping in on weekends may help reduce diabetes risk, Reuters reports, quoting the lead author of a study on the topic as saying: “It gives us some hope that if there is no way to extend sleep during the week, people should try very hard to protect their sleep when they do get an opportunity to sleep in and sleep as much as possible to pay back the sleep debt. … We don’t know if people can recover if the behavior is repeated every week. It is likely though that if any group of people suffer from sleep loss, getting extra sleep will be beneficial.”

Next: Go read “Desperate for Slumber in Delhi, Homeless Encounter a ‘Sleep Mafia’” — and be very grateful for all we have in life.

Say hello to “Fatty,” the newest planet in our solar system? Astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin are trying to make the case that there actually is a ninth planet in the solar system. No, not Pluto — it still remains demoted to dwarf planet status. The astronomers have not yet observed that planet directly, “only inferred its presence from the behavior of a handful of faraway objects, which have been caught in its gravitational sway,” but are convinced a “distant, eccentric perturber” exists. It is a big one as well, estimated to be ten times the size of the earth, and follows an elliptical orbit, leaving it at its closest point 250 times as far from the sun as the earth. Brown and Batygin call it “Fatty” when they are just talking to each other, Brown told The New Yorker’s Alan Burdick, but other names include Planet Nine, and Jehoshaphat, and George. It takes Fatty 12,000-20,000 earth years to go once around the sun. Is it really a “planet” though? Brown says yes: “There’s virtually no doubt … What we now call planets are objects that can gravitationally dominate their neighborhood. Pluto is a slave to the gravitational influence of Neptune. By area, Planet Nine dominates more of the solar system than any other known planet — it’s only because of this that we can infer its existence.” Science Magazine has a nice video illustration of the new planet and its orbit.

If you’re awake before dawn, like the majority of us here at Enterprise, five planets are now bright enough to see with the naked eye — and out at the same time, according to EarthSky. This is the first time that Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury have been out together since January 2005. The planets will be rising from January 20 through February, but will be easiest to see on 25 January. That’s not an omen. We promise.

How much can we trust Chinese growth figures? “Not a lot” says the chief Asia economist at Capital Economics. “They are absolute make-believe,” says a provider of private data on the world’s second-largest economy. With a Chinese slowdown taking global markets down, go read “The country that tricked the world.”

Oxfam says the richest 62 people in the world are as wealthy as half the world’s population. Oxfam’s says the the richest 1% now own more than the other 99%, with the wealth of the poorest 50% dropping 41% between 2010 and 2015. The Guardian notes that “Oxfam said a three-pronged approach was needed: a crackdown on tax dodging; higher investment in public services; and higher wages for the low paid.”

…But the issue isn’t as clear-cut as Oxfam makes it, Tim Harford explained in an article from 2014. Harford’s case study? His toddler, who, by Oxfam’s measure, controls more wealth than the poorest 1.5 bn people in the world. He doesn’t have a rich uncle, but was born with no debts, putting his wealth at zero. “The poorest people have more debts than assets; their wealth is less than zero,” he wrote. What’s the problem with Oxfam’s analysis then? It doesn’t include earning potential, giving zero weight to human capital.

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro expressed “nearly unprecedented criticism against Israel’s settlements in the West Bank” and stoked further political tensions between the US and Israel on Monday when he attacked the latter’s double standards in enforcing security in the West Bank, according to Haaretz. “Too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked,” Shapiro said at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), adding that “there is a lack of thorough investigations… at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank – one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.” The statement, which drew criticisms from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, were the latest in a string of criticism by the Obama administration over settlement policies in the past two weeks.

You’re not living for the weekend, you’re living for more time with the people you love being with. That’s the fundamental finding of “You don’t need more free time.” The key feature of the work-life balance problem, writes Stanford professor Cristobal Young is that “you cannot get more ‘weekend’ simply by taking an extra day off work yourself. If we were to take more time off as individuals, we would be likely to spend that time, as the jobless do, waiting for other people to finish work. We are stuck ‘at work,’ in a sense, by the work schedules of our family and friends.”

Were tennis matches at Wimbledon fixed? The BBC partnered with Buzzfeed News to uncover “secret files exposing evidence of widespread suspected match-fixing at the top level of world tennis, including at Wimbledon.” The reporting includes the findings of an investigation set up in 2007 by the ATP that uncovered “betting syndicates in Russia, northern Italy and Sicily making hundreds of thousands of pounds betting on matches investigators thought to be fixed. Three of these matches were at Wimbledon.” While 28 players were believed to be involved, following a confidential 2008 report, the findings were never followed up on. The BBC says “tennis introduced a new anti-corruption code in 2009 but after taking legal advice were told previous corruption offences could not be pursued,” so none of the involved players’ incidents were investigated. “There was a core of about 10 players who we believed were the most common perpetrators that were at the root of the problem,” Mark Phillips, one of the betting investigators in the 2007 enquiry, told the BBC. Eight of those repeatedly flagged players over the past decade are playing in the Australian Open at the moment. Even though the BBC and Buzzfeed were given the names of players who were warned repeatedly, they decided not to publish them.

Current world number one Novak Djokovic downplayed the allegations, saying there is “no real proof” of match fixing at the top level. He did, however, claim that he rejected a USD 200k offer to lose a first-round match at a tournament in St. Petersburg, Russia. Former world number one Roger Federer also dismissed the allegations saying, “It’s nonsense to answer something that is pure speculation.” He called on BBC and Buzzfeed to release the names of the players allegedly involved.

Twitter endorsement of the weekend: Esquire magazine. Yeah, we know, who reads magazines anymore? Even the two senior editors of Enterprise — both of them former magazine writers and editors — consume just about everything digitally now. Into the breach steps Esquire, the venerable men’s magazine that has digitized an archive going back to the first issue in 1933. It’s Twitter feed is a source of eclectic finds ranging from “Quentin Tarantino reveals how every one of his movies are connected” to their regular “Women We Love of Instagram” vignette [no link because it involves a word the algorithms filters don’t like] to links to magazine-length pieces that appeared in their print edition. Our favourite this morning (for reasons obvious if we’ve run into each other in the last month or so): “Your beard is saying a lot more than you think: A fascinating Q&A with the author of the new book ‘Of Beards and Men.’​”

Did hunter-gatherers go to war? “The scene was a lagoon on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya. The time about 10,000 years ago. One group of hunter-gatherers attacked and slaughtered another, leaving the dead with crushed skulls, embedded arrow or spear points, and other devastating wounds. … The bones at the lake, in northern Kenya, tell a tale of ferocity. One man was hit twice in the head by arrows or small spears and in the knee by a club. A woman, pregnant with a 6- to 9-month-old fetus, was killed by a blow to the head, the fetal skeleton preserved in her abdomen. The position of her hands and feet suggest that she may have been tied up before she was killed.” Read: “Prehistoric Massacre Hints at War Among Hunter-Gatherers.”

And speaking of war, your inner ten-year-old will thank you for reading “How Rogue Techies Armed the Predator, Almost Stopped 9/11, and Accidentally Invented Remote War.” It’s two parts oral history, one part great storytelling from Arthur Holland Michel at Bard College’s Center for the Study of the Drone.

This might sound like the end of the world if you are a regular user of London’s underground, but a team of strategists are trying to get commuters to use both sides of the escalators, instead of just standing on the right. This was already being tested at the Holborn Station. “The theory, if counterintuitive, is also pretty compelling. Think about it. It’s all very well keeping one side of the escalator clear for people in a rush, but in stations with long, steep walkways, only a small proportion are likely to be willing to climb,” Archie Bland explains in The Guardian. Some preliminary calculations show that this could allow 28% more people on the escalator each minute, but the real challenge is getting commuters behavior to change as, for years, the “tube” had asked people to stand on the right. Even though commuters were not entirely happy with the change, the results at Holborn exceeded those preliminary calculations. Now, enforcing the new “tube etiquette” and stopping people from walking up the tube escalators is the next big step for the Transport for London (TfL).

HBR says if you want to be a great leader, you need to keep a journal. “Extraordinary leadership is rooted in several capabilities: seeing before others see, understanding before others understand, and acting before others act. A leader’s unique perspective is an important source of creativity and competitive advantage. But the reality is that most of us live such fast-paced, frenzied lives that we fail to leave time to actually listen to ourselves.” The solution? A handwritten journal (even if you later snap photos of every spread to store in Evernote or OneNote). Commit to writing 15 minutes a day; the HRB piece includes prompts and ideas.

Wait, autonomous cars are actually happening? After months of rumors, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced last week a nearly USD 4 bn plan to get the wheels turning (terrible pun intended) on automated vehicle research and development by 2017. What exactly does the plan entail? Gizmodo has a full rundown of things you need to know, but the gist of it is that Americans will soon be seeing a lot more self-driving cars in the year to come. Pilot programs are set to run all over the U.S. to test the cars in various situations and weather conditions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is allowing up to 2,500 fully autonomous vehicles on the road for up to two years “if the agency determines that an exemption [to safety standards] would ease development of new safety features.” But at the end of the day, individual states will have full autonomy over legislation governing the vehicles, considering there aren’t exactly federal laws in place governing driving. This could be the thorn in the foot of autonomous cars, but for now, let’s enjoy the idea that one day we (or our children, or grandchildren) may not have to fear for our very lives every time we venture onto the Ring Road.

Dear sir: Your open-plan cubicle farm stinks. Even when it draws on your heritage as a news organization or creative agency. Even if it’s got gorgeous hardwood floors, exposed bricks and a raw beam-and-pillar construction. See more at Digiday or at the New Yorker.

The guy in the lede to this story spends his conference calls scrubbing his floors and doing his dishes. And that’s only the beginning: “Conference calls give rise to what could well be society’s most widespread, implicitly sanctioned collection of antisocial behaviors,” writes the New York Times.

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WATCH THIS

The Zipf Law mystery: The most commonly used word in the English language is “the,” followed by “of,” “and,” and “to.” This isn’t just a fun fact. Oddly enough, the second most used word in the English language will appear half as much as the most used, the third most used a third as much, the fourth most used a quarter as much, and so on. Bizarrely, this pattern, known as the “Zipf Law,” is not just exclusive to English — it applies to all other languages, including ancient ones. And yet we have no idea why. The Zipf Law is also applicable to a number of other not-entirely-random phenomena, including the populations of cities, solar flares, last names and the number of times academic papers are cited. YouTube channel Vsauce explains the law, its ramifications, some related patterns and the depth of the Zipf Law mystery itself. (Run time 21:04)

There isn’t a single answer to becoming more creative. Instead, scientific director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania Scott Kaufman argues that it’s a constant balancing act between two fundamental brain states. The moment processing, or the Executive attention network, and future planning, the default mode network. (Run time 04:16)

DOCUMENTARY OF THE WEEK: BBC Horizon’s The Midas Formula tells the story of the collapse of long-term capital management (LTCM). It’s a tale of a few brilliant economists who won the Nobel Prize and were hailed for creating what was perceived to be a full-proof hedging strategy — until it all came crashing down. The mathematical formula, which was thought to eliminate risk itself, helped drive the perception of the reception-proof bull market era of the 1990s, until it’s creators decided to capitalize on it through LTCM. The scale of the firm’s success and catastrophic demise did away with the arrogant notion that markets can be fully tamed. You can access the documentary on YouTube here. (Run time: 48:54)

LISTEN TO THIS

Being a woman in Saudi Arabia’s labor market: The BBC’s business daily examined what it is like to work in “the toughest place in the world for a woman to find work” where only one in five workers is female. Practical issues were a major impediment to Nancy Ruddy, co-founder of CetraRuddy, who was helping build a hotel and shopping complex in Jeddah. “The absolute most shocking thing was … they had a relatively new 23-storey modern glass building that was their headquarters, and there were no ladies rooms,” Ruddy explains. What was more uncomfortable for her was that she was never allowed to walk alone at any time. The program also includes an interview with Rawan Al-Butairi, a 28-year-old executive working with Aramco who presents a somewhat contrasting view. (Run time 17:28)

How effective are boycotts? Freakonomics Radio podcast looked into whether boycott campaigns actually produce the change they are fighting for in their episode on Thursday. Evidence shows that they are not necessarily effective and there often are no boycott effects. The South African divestment campaign, for example, seems to not have played much of a role in ending apartheid and did not really hurt South African companies. When do they work? When large government force is involved, effectively an embargo, as was the case with Iran, for example. (Run time 37:38)

ENTREPRENEURS

“How we got off the addiction to venture capital and created our own way to profits” is a 4,000-word essay by Skift founder Rafat Ali, one of the best (and most irascible) thinkers on startups and media writing today. Ali boils down eleven key takeaways, but it really comes down to one: Saying “No” as often as possible — to outsiders who want to have coffee, to your own half-baked ideas — and so remain focused on revenues, revenues, revenues.

Which brings us to this: The best business strategy in the world has only four words: Do fewer things, better.

Oh, and side projects? Best you give those a pretty wide berth, too. Unless your primary business is cratering. For that, read the story of Coudal Partners: “After 9/11, we lost a lot of business. And we were in trouble. It wasn’t any problem of ours. One company got bought and other people cut back on their spending,” he explains. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to us because we pulled back and said, ‘Well, do we wanna build up this whole thing again and go chase business that we don’t want and get into pitches and win or not win business based on the whims of people who are stupider than we are? Or is there another way?’” Read: “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: Coudal”

SOMETHING THAT MADE US THINK

Part of human history may have to be rewritten: A 45,000-year-old wooly mammoth carcass showing signs it was hunted by humans could change the timeline of human history, according to a report published last week in Science. The carcass was excavated in central Siberia, making it the oldest evidence for human expansion into the high Arctic. “The remains of a hunted wolf from a widely separate location of similar age indicate that humans may have spread widely across northern Siberia at least 10 millennia earlier than previously thought,” reads the report. “We [now] know that the eastern Siberia up to its Arctic limits was populated starting at roughly 50,000 years ago,” said Vladimir Pitulko, lead author on the study. “This makes our window into the remote part [of the planet] open wider.”

The tourist marriage law: protecting women or human trafficking? The newly amended “tourist marriage law,” which requires foreign men marrying Egyptian women 25 or more years younger than their would-be husbands to deposit EGP 50,000 in her name at the National Bank of Egypt, sheds light on an alarming issue. Al Arabiya’s Sonia Farid explains how the law has morphed since 1976, originally banning marriages if the age difference exceeded 25 years. In 1993, under pressure from Islamist groups, the ban was lifted, but included a EGP 25,000 deposit. Activists and human rights groups are calling the law grounds to facilitate “legalized [exchange of money for certain forms of intimate services].” The money, meant as security for the bride-to-be if the marriage falls through, usually ends up with the family and not the bride. Thanaa Al Saeid, a member of the National Council for Women, says the law only allows women to be perceived as commodities. “This law should totally prohibit this kind of marriage and should penalize fathers who agree to sell their daughters,” she said. On the flipside, Justice Ministry spokesperson Hamdi Moawad says the amendments introduce new modifications to protect women’s rights. “The law stipulates that the husband [must] submit documents from his embassy that contain information about him, his income and his family,” he said. “[If] any of the documents are missing, the husband-to-be needs to submit a request to the justice minister, who then decides if he can be exempt from providing documentation.”

HEALTH

January is almost over, and with it your New Year’s resolution to lose weight, quit smoking, drink less, be a better person, learn to [whatever]. If you can choose only one thing to stick with, it should be exercise — it can rewire your brain, make you more creative, improve your memory and help you avoid dementia. And that’s just the beginning. Check out this comprehensive, accessible overview by a neuroscientist of how exercise doesn’t just make you look better, it can help make you a better person.

PERSONAL TECH

Ah Twitter, always looking for new ways to lose money: In case you haven’t heard, Twitter isn’t doing so great. The social media company reported a net loss in the third quarter of last year and shares are hitting new lows as it struggles to attract new users while simultaneously expanding the services it provides. After dipping its toe into video with Periscope and Vine and expanding its character limit, Twitter is now trying its hand at music. The company has invested in headphone company Muzik — its first investment into hardware. But it’s Muzik’s software applications Twitter seems to be most interested in. Muzik headphones will actually recognize what you’re listening to (be it through iTunes, Pandora or otherwise) and let you push that information to social media. Enter Twitter, which will let you attach a picture and location to your “musical tweet” (see here). “It allows people to create these special moments in time,” said Jason Hardi, Muzik’s founder and CEO. “It creates a visual soundtrack of your life,” according to Hardi, who says what Twitter and Muzik are doing together is “really going to change the world.” A lofty goal perhaps, considering Twitter’s last move into music tanked.

TECH

The demise of Europe’s biggest Kickstarter project: Last year, Kickstarter chose the Zano as a “staff pick,” while tech news site Engadget shortlisted it for its best of CES 2015 award, despite the Torquing team behind it being unable to demonstrate the drone flying at the show. As late as October, Popular Science chose it as one of its 100 most amazing innovations of 2015. When Torquing Group decided to opt for a “creditors’ voluntary liquidation” after being unable to deliver the promised Zano mini drones, Kickstarter commissioned investigative journalist Mark Harris to “find out why a highly funded crowdfunding campaign for a palm-sized drone flamed out in order to give backers the full story, and provide lessons for itself and others.” The resulting piece, while lengthy (13,000 words) is a very revealing account of the risks related to crowdfunding as opposed to venture capital and banking. While criticism focused on how crowdfunding platforms need to reconsider the way they deal with projects involving complex hardware, massive overfunding, or large sums of money, Kickstarter’s co-founder Yancey Strickler said tightening up the rules can only go so far, he argues, and it is essential for backers to understand that it is up to them to evaluate a project. “If you want 100% success with hardware and new products, I think the only solution is that you just shop on Amazon,” he adds.

SOMEONE TO FOLLOW

Taiwan elected Tsai Ing-wen as its first female president last Saturday in a landslide victory for the Democratic Progressive party (DPP), the FT writes (paywall). She has pledged to revitalize the sluggish economy of Taiwan by “diversifying trade with South, Southeast and East Asia, thus breaking with the [Nationalist Party] policy of greater integration with China — the world’s second biggest economy — in the hopes that it would boost Taiwan’s own,” according to Time. Her immediate concern will likely be reviving the economy. Taiwan’s GDP shrunk in the last quarter of 2015 and is estimated to have grown just 1% last year. And while the DPP has traditionally favored Taiwan’s independence from China, “Tsai pledged to maintain the status quo,” according to The New York Times. “A commentary published by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency called on Ms. Tsai to be prudent, saying Taiwan independence was a ‘poison’ that was rejected by mainstream opinion on the island.”

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• Egypt unveils rare whale fossil museum to boost tourism (with gorgeous photography of an architecturally stunning facility) (Associated Press)
• Openings: Revolution in the air at Egypt’s elite enclave (or: Alaa Al Aswany makes it into the Financial Times) (Financial Times)
• Six misguided ideas about the Egyptian economy (The National)
• Flamboyant Egyptian Politician Craves Public Eye (or: Mortada Mansour makes it into the New York Times) (New York Times)
• Israeli group finds signs of large east Mediterranean gas field (Reuters, plus an Offshore Energy Today map showing the field location)

ON YOUR WAY OUT

Let’s just face it, aliens built the pyramids: In what can only be described as the stuff of sci-fi movies, international headlines on Egypt last week were dominated by new “cosmic” technology that could reveal clues as to how the pyramids were built. Researchers placed plates within Egypt’s Bent Pyramid last month to catch muons that rain down on Earth from the atmosphere. The scientists hope to see where the particles accumulate to understand what’s inside the pyramid, built by Pharaoh Snefru. The Guardian has a video up for those of us who are archaeologically impaired, complete with a soundtrack that makes you feel something groundbreaking is about to be revealed. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t)

Eating street food while travelling is always a gamble, but Jodi Ettenberg is using her personal experience from travelling around the world on “how to eat street food without getting sick.” Some of her advice include trying to find food near universities, using vendors with two-party stalls with one person in charge of cash and the other doing the cooking, and following the local mealtimes. This is not foolproof, though; if you get food poisoning, Ettenberg recommends staying away from sweetened sport electrolyte drinks, resorting instead to “a steady diet of oral rehydration salts, rice, and bananas.”

And, finally: It didn’t take long for the mass [redacted] assault of nearly 350 women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve to prompt comparisons with Egypt and Tahrir Square — not least because the victims described their assailants as “foreign,” “North African,” and “Arab.” Mass assaults in Egypt, or Taharrush gamea, have been used in the past as political tools. Writing in Israel’s Haaretz, Khaled Diab sees the latter as responsible in the events of Cologne. Both cases are comparable in their systematic approach to mass assault. The political motive in Cologne, he posits, appears to be playing into the hands of anti-refugee and Islamophobic rhetoric across Europe (such as this particularly disgusting Charlie Hebdo cartoon). Even relatively liberal publications such as Die Zeit argued that the “acculturation (of immigrants) into the [gender relations] codes of the West takes years.”