The Weekend Edition

EGYPT REACHES LOAN AGREEMENT WITH IMF: Although we have a moratorium on hard news in the weekend edition, we do note that the Ismail government reached yesterday an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a three-year, USD 12 bn financing facility. Hoorah, right? Well, kind of, as we’ll discuss on Sunday. It’s a (very large) step in the right direction, but as Robert Frost would tell us: “But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.” Can’t wait for Sunday? Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journals have the basics.

Profanity is good for us? What the [redacted]? Anyone who’s read Enterprise for more than a week knows that we sometimes struggle to restrain our love of (well-chosen, well-timed) profanity. Imagine our delight at finding “Profanity is pretty f**king good for us, actually” on Quartz: “My wife swears in front of our 12-year-old son. I swear occasionally, too, when I stub my toe or can’t find the cordless phone. This is involuntary swearing, a habit which always makes me feel a twinge of guilt afterwards. Not my wife though. She swears deliberately, outraging my sensibilities and causing my son to dissolve into delighted giggles.” Not that we’d necessarily recommend cursing in front of your 12-year-old, but…

Have we fallen out of love with gold, or are we simply unable to afford it? Demand for jewelry across the Middle East plunged 22% in the first half of this year to 45 metric tons — and the decline in Egypt was the worst in the region, falling “40 percent to 5.3 tons, the lowest on record,” Bloomberg says, picking up on a report on global demand issued by the World Gold Council yesterday. You can download the full report here (pdf) or check out the landing page here to have access to extras including PPT files of the charts.

Are you a gold bug? CNBC suggests “you’re not alone as gold demand sets a new record.” And if you are, you’re in, uh, great company: Trump supporters are definitely down with investing in gold, according to this right-wing website.

The Economist’s list of big economic ideas continued with its third brief talking about the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, coined by economists Wolfgang Stolper and Paul Samuelson. The theorem shed a new light on the relationship between tariffs and wages and was presented in a paper deemed “‘remarkable’ … partly because it proved something seemingly obvious to non-economists: free trade with low-wage nations could hurt workers in a high-wage country.” On the face of it, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem explains how globalisation has hurt low-skilled worker in rich economies, but it was “unable to explain why skilled workers have prospered even in developing countries, where they are not abundant.” Our favourite takeaway from the brief is this Stolper quote from 1960: “Any industry which required high duties impoverished the country and wasn’t worth having.” Next week, the series will present the famous Keynesian multiplier.

Turns out, you can’t force your staff to be happy. But you knew that already, right? The New Yorker’s What Makes People Upbeat at Work looks into why workplaces with mandated codes for how employees need to act often times have the worst employee engagement — and clients can tell. Last year, researchers found “an inverted-U relationship between rule explicitness and effectiveness: If rules were overly vague or overly prescriptive, they had a demotivating effect. (Customers, too, were disappointed, giving both employees and their shopping experiences lower ratings.) Where the rules generally had their intended effect was in the moderate range: When there were some explicit guidelines, but flexibility in how they were to be implemented. A second study, of a hundred and seventy-five salespeople, found the relationship to hold for sales numbers as well: Sales were higher in environments with moderate rules, while environments with too few or too many rules suffered. The highest performers of all were those in a moderately regulated environment who also felt a high degree of autonomy, as determined by their responses to a single statement: “My job permits me to decide on my own how to go about doing the work.”

Neanderthals die- off because they never figured out how to make winter clothing: So claims the author of a new study that’s shaking up how we see the end of the Neanderthals: It may come down to the fact that “Neanderthals employed only cape-like clothing while early modern humans used specialized cold-weather clothing.” Need more on Neanderthals, the species of human that roamed Europe 120,000 to 35,000 years ago before we helped push them into extinction? Start with the National Geographic’s “Neanderthals … They’re Just Like Us?” and its haunting lead image of a “red-headed, freckled and fair” Neanderthal.

The contemporary art “boom” could be hurting museums’ bottom lines, Robert Ekelund, Eminent Scholar and Professor of Economics Emeritus at Auburn University, writes. Ekelund contrasts the experiences of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), which is undergoing significant financial challenges, with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which is “flush” with cash. “While the Met’s contemporary collection has grown somewhat in recent years, it has been unable to quickly adjust to the changing tastes of museum-goers, who increasingly favor modern and contemporary art. This has put it at a competitive disadvantage.

The economic point here is that if a museum like the Met isn’t able to keep up as its customers’ tastes change, revenue will likely fall. And by the time it might recognize this, it’s already too late to do much about it because the costs to acquire the in-demand art is sky-high.” Ekelund points specifically to the shift in bn’aires’ taste towards contemporary art: “In a world with about 1,800 billionaires, it only takes a relative few to drive high-end art prices to astronomical levels… soaring prices mean museums simply can’t keep up and must usually depend on donations to assemble portfolios of the best work, or they’re priced out.” Also making the problems more challenging are demographic issues that “have exacerbated the problems of museum finance and operations by putting pressure on the revenue side of the equation.”

Apple geeks: STOP HERE. If you haven’t stumbled across it yet already, go make yourself a cup of coffee and then open Wired’s “Playing the Long Game Inside Tim Cook’s Apple,” by Rick Tetzeli, the veteran journalist and author of “Becoming Steve Jobs.” The story is an epically long look at Apple under Cook, based on extensive (and apparently very relaxed) interviews with Cook as well as top lieutenants Craig Federighi and the always fashion-challenged Eddy Cue. Bonus content: Wired has a long transcript of Tetzeli talking Cue and Federighi through what they’ve learned from Apple’s failures. With barely a month remaining until the expected date of Apple’s fall event, there’s no better way to kill some time this morning.

Apple quote of the week, recycled from 2010: “When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, ‘We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.’”

Woman + Muslim + ethnic minority = “triple penalty” That’s what a report by Britain’s House of Commons Committee on Women and Equalities found, writes Tara John for Time. They have the highest levels of unemployment. Muslims are already twice more likely to be unemployed in the UK, let alone a woman: 65% of economically inactive Muslims older than 16 in England and Wales are women. “We heard evidence the stereotypical views of Muslim women can act as a barrier to work,” the Committee Chair and Conservative Member of Parliament Maria Miller said. “The data suggests that in communities these patterns are shifting across generations but we remain concerned that this shift is happening too slowly and that not all Muslim women are being treated equally.” The committee called for name-blind recruitment. Because Utopia mode on.

Winona Ryder is back … again. Long-time readers will remember back in February we picked up on Soraya Roberts’ Winona, Forever, a piece that was nothing if not a meditation (with an artsy-intellectual edge) on both nostalgia and adulthood. “Ryder has always been trapped in her own anticipatory nostalgia, and the public has always wanted to keep her there,” read the dek on the piece. Trapped in “anticipatory nostalgia”? Not today, it seems, according to this charming New York Magazine interview. Ryder is now starring in the Netflix breakout hit “Stranger Things,” a “supernatural, Spielbergian ‘80s-era drama” that’s getting rave reviews. Bonus: Stranger Things is on Egyptian Netflix and features a soundtrack that will induce nostalgia (for those of a certain age).

Trump’s genius: Bringing poor, white America back into the political mainstream. As we noted last weekend, these are the people who will turn out in droves for Trump. The Atlantic has gotten on the bandwagon, explaining how “a barely suppressed contempt” toward poor whites “from both the left and the right” has created a body of voters who were in the large part responsible for Trump’s rise. “Either they are layabouts drenched in self-pity or they are sad cases consumed with racial status anxiety and animus toward the nonwhites passing them on the ladder,” Nancy Isenberg argues, explaining that Trump’s genius was learning how to reach out and bring them into some approximation of the political mainstream.

If you have teenagers (or ‘tweens’) you need to read “What Teens Most Need From Their Parents” in the Wall Street Journal (paywall). The piece breaks down the teen years, with practical tips for each and every age. If you’re bracing for your kid’s teens and aren’t already a subscriber, it’s worthwhile registering and making this one of your free articles for the month. In brief:

• Age 11-12: It’s about coaching the kids as “tweens can actually slip backward in some basic skills. Spatial learning and certain kinds of reasoning may decline at this age…:”
• Ages 13-14: “Embrace what is often a wildly emotional passage.”
• Ages 15-16: “Teens’ appetite for risk-taking peaks at this age.”

Losing hope? Don’t. The piece tells us that by 17-18, the “benefits of the teenage brain’s ability to change and develop are evident.”

Still want to strangle your teen? (Metaphorically, of course.) Don’t feel so bad. The BBC suggests that “being bad-tempered and pessimistic helps you earn more, live longer and enjoy a healthier marriage.” Read: “Why it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered.”

DOCUMENTARY OF THE WEEK – American Experience’s Silicon Valley: Just when you thought this brilliant series could not top itself, it does. This documentary explores the founding moment that turned a valley carpeted with orange groves into the nerve center of the global technology boom. It looks at the ‘treacherous eight’ and their leader — the father of Silicon Valley, Robert Noyce. Tired of the abuse they endured at Shockley’s Semiconductors Lab, they did something unprecedented in their era: They left and founded their own company, reinventing themselves and entrepreneurship in the process. The film looks at how the early venture capitalists helped them form Fairchild Semiconductors, the most cutting edge innovator in the development of the microchip. But their lasting legacy would be the corporate culture of openness, collegiality and innovation which sprouted in the many companies that came after them. The documentary would finally give Noyce — who has largely been overshadowed by his eager fan Steve Jobs — the recognition he deserves as a leader and pioneer, who at the height of his career, decided to simply start over and found Intel. You can watch the film on Youtube here (runtime: 1:26:22)

Take a tour of the house the Obamas will live in after they leave the White House: It looks like President Obama and his family will lease a 9-bedroom, 8,200-square-foot mansion in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC, estimated by Redfin to be worth USD 6.6 mn. The house is said to be owned by Joe Lockhart, the Glover Park Group co-founder and his wife Giovanna Gray, Washington editor of Glamour, who will move to Manhattan. Mansion Global published a video and pictures of the residence, the news of which were first picked up by Politico in May. Take a look at house in this video (Runtime 5:12)

NYT Magazine: “How the Arab World came apart”: In the longest story it has ever run, occupying a full magazine issue in print, the New York Times Magazine has published an in-depth Scott Anderson piece on the events in the region since the Iraqi invasion titled Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart through the narratives of six characters, from long-time Egyptian activist Laila Soueif to Iraqi Khulood al-Zaidi. Accompanied with extensive, stunning portfolios of Italian-born photographer Paolo Pellegrin from Tripoli to Damascus, the five-part saga is truly — as editor in chief Jake Silverstein calls it — “unprecedented…[offering] one of the most clear-eyed, powerful and human explanations of what has gone wrong in this region.” The 40,000-word essay will rub you the wrong way at times, but that doesn’t mean it’s not compelling storytelling — or that it doesn’t raise issues we might do well to think of. Bonus: There’s no advertisements here.

How do you get off to a great start as a new CEO? McKinsey & Co partner Michael Birshan and associate partner Thomas Meakin talk with McKinsey Quarterly editor in chief Allen Webb about how new CEOs become successful in an episode of The McKinsey Podcast. They measured “success” as the excess total returns to shareholders “which is the performance of one company over or beneath the average performance of its industry peers over the same time period.” The worst thing you can do as a new CEO is to “not do very much,” they say. “Chief executives in underperforming companies are much more successful in generating outsized returns if they pull multiple levers at once. If you’re in an underperforming situation, use the whole playbook, throw the kitchen sink at it.” Strikingly, they found that “chief executives who are outsiders to the company, on average, outperform those who are insiders.” (Runtime 20:00)

Solving the Middle East’s water problems: The lack of dependable utilities is proving to be a contentious issue politically and problematic for businesses in Lebanon, according to a report by the BBC World Service’s Business Daily. The report investigates potential solutions to the recurring disruptions to water supply in supposedly-water-rich Lebanon. If left unaddressed, poor water management and climate change, across the Middle East generally, are likely to lead to more conflict and spur a wave a migration. (Runtime 20:48)

Hollywood tackles the “glass ceiling” in a new film on the “She-Wolves” of Wall Street: “Equity” (Trailer; runtime 2:05), a recently released film following a senior investment banker trying to overcome the usual Barrie’s of working in a male-dominated field, certainly passes the Bechdel test — although there’s only one scene (runtime 2:38) that might get you to think otherwise. Other scenes (runtime 1:26) are refreshingly, realistically bold. The Cut ran a piece last week on what industry veterans had to say about the film at an NYC screening. While the acting might not have received stellar reviews, we’d recommend “Equity” if gripping workplace dramas such as “Spotlight” happen to be your cup of tea. There’s no word yet on when it might hit Egyptian cinemas, so keep your eyes out for when it might hit iTunes.

The pioneer of color photography died in obscurity: Why? Good old fashioned prudery. Paul Outerbridge, born in 1896 in New York, was at one time a big deal in the world of photography, according to the New York Post, which carries a beautiful photo essay of his work (possibly NSFW, assuming you’re reading this on a weekday). “In the nineteen-thirties, after a decade of finessing the chiaroscuro subtleties of black-and-white, he mastered carbro color printing, an intricate, now obsolete process favored by magazines and Madison Avenue. (Outerbridge literally wrote the book on the subject: ‘Photographing in Color,’ which was published by Random House, in 1940.)” It’s hard to believe now, but at one point color photography was considered vulgar. Outerbridge “believed that the fullest expression of the new color process was the study of the female body — but, again, what was tasteful in black-and-white was considered unseemly in color,” so he fell out of favor. It wasn’t until the 1970s and 1990s that he periodically came into public awareness again for his work.

Get off your high horse, vegan: Eschewing meat and animal products may not be as good for the environment as you think. In a study published in the journal Elementa, researchers simulated biophysical conditions based on kinds of land used for different sorts of farming and how those plots could support vegan, vegetarian, and various levels of meat-eating omnivorous diets. It turns out, dairy-friendly vegetarians are the clear winner when it comes to what farmland could best be used to feed the most people, followed by egg and dairy-friendly vegetarians and 20% then 40% omnivores, leavings vegans in fifth place. And yes, about 40% of the reason we put this piece in is to be able to link to AwakenwithJP’s hilariousIf Meat Eaters Acted Like Vegans (run time 3:02).

This is why you can’t move when you wake up: At night when we sleep, our back stops producing anti-inflammatory protein, so the body takes some time to recover in the morning, which is why we feel pain on waking, research by scientists at Manchester University featured in a Telegraph article says. The discovery makes it possible to develop new drugs for arthritis and can help adjusting the time when a drug should be administered to be more effective. One more thing: You don’t have to just worry about your brain when you’re jet-lagged, now add your back to the list: “Researchers at the University of Manchester also found that discs in the spine have 24-hour body clocks, which when they do not work properly can contribute to lower back pain,” the article says. Explains a lot about the health condition of us at the night shift, as the article specifically advises against “night working” and “rotating shift work.”

Book lovers, rejoice: Reading and longevity are linked. “Book readers experience a c20% reduction in risk of mortality over 12 years of follow-up,” according to a recent Yale University study, which concludes that a consistent reading habit may lead to a “significant survival advantage”. The cause of this correlation is unclear, but other studies have demonstrated that “reading novels boosts brain connectivity and empathy”. In the findings, Egypt comes ahead of the United States on the list of countries that read the most books (although that doesn’t include newspapers, but likely includes the Holy Quran?).

Can we ever develop AI that is not sexist or racist? Yes, sexist, racist machines are something we may be dealing with. By virtue of being developed by tech companies that rely on interactions through social platforms, machine learning technologies unfortunately keep picking up our biases and reflecting them back at us. Last month, a team of researchers from Boston University and Microsoft Research devised an algorithm capable of identifying stereotypes in writing, having it analyze a three-mn word corpus of Google News stories, to exhibit gender bias. And the results were as bad as one would expect. Occupation searches revealed that women were disproportionately billed as a “hairdresser”, “socialite” or “nanny”, while men were associated with “maestro”, “skipper” or “protegé”. The team analysed the same Google News corpus for signs of racial bias, and found similar results. Functionality on tech that relies on machine learning which studies us may help perpetuate these prejudices. A search engine could rank content developed by males higher than females, depriving the user of possibly more useful material purely out of acquired sexism. And then off course there was the case of Tay, Microsoft’s’ neo-Nazi twitter chat bot. Scientists that are part of the research team who spoke to Vice Motherboard are unfazed, and believe that research like theirs will help correct these trends in machine learning, which are much easier to fix than human.

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

• The Daily Mail’s favourite “Bikini vs. Veil” image from the Egypt-Germany beach volleyball match. (Daily Mail)
• The Central Bank of Egypt trying to stamp out the black market without a liquidity shield. (animated GIF, spoof)
• Nice Cargo Shorts! You’re Sleeping on the Sofa (Wall Street Journal, paywall)
• Beach Volleyball: Egypt’s player in hijab gets Brazilian support (Reuters)
• How to get away with (the perfect) murder (GQ)

What time is it anyway? While Egypt’s parliament deliberated over the summer whether to have daylight savings, time scientists across the world are locked in a struggle of whether to have a leap second. Yes, leap seconds are actually a thing. Measuring time during the day has always been based on the earth’s position relative to the sun on its daily axis around itself. Apparently that axis rotation has been slowing down as the tides that hit the world’s beaches takes energy out of its spin, allowing down the earth. The world’s keepers of the true accuracy of time, dubbed “time masters”, use an atomic clock to measure atomic time: 9.2 billion oscillations of a microwave beam, when tuned to the frequency of a caesium atom, roughly the equivalent to the 86,400 seconds of the day. The effects of the tide on the earth’s rotation makes it several mn times less stable than the caesium atom. In order to correct the discrepancy between the two, time masters have allowed on several occasions to hold time still at 00.00.00 for one second, called a leap second. This is has happened every other year or so since 1972, according to The Economist’s 1843 magazine.

Why would should we care? These measurements govern the world’s standard time relied upon by global positioning satellites silently travelling, planes for flying, computers for talking to each other and trading in the global markets. Sometimes not everyone gets the memo, causing glitches such as on 30 June 2015, where some financial markets chose to close for a minute, while services at Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Twitter were disrupted. The danger is more acute for global finance in light of the prevalence of high frequency trading, when a second can affect time between when an order is placed and when it is executed. When beating the competition by fractions of a second becomes crucial, a disruption that small could mess up the order of trades. Time scientists fighting for eliminating the leap year argue that the shifts would cause damages of Y2K proportions. They claim that the leap year is a throwback to when the world was much less interconnected, accusing proponents of holding on to archaic Victorian notions where Britain determined the standard. This argument is helped by the UK’s time masters leading the fight to retain the leap year, who dismiss their opponents concerns as sensationalist. Expect an extra second this year at 23:59:60 on 31 December, according to New Scientist.