Blackhawks reward Josiah Slavin’s hard work with first NHL call - Chicago Sun-Times

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Forward Josiah Slavin has worked hard to improve his skating. For the time being, he’ll continue refining it in the NHL.

Recalled Monday from AHL Rockford in a swap with Philipp Kurashev, the 22-year-old Slavin has been one of the IceHogs’ most consistent forwards, collecting four goals and four assists. His game, though, is unfinished and that fundamental aspect has required most of Slavin’s attention.

“It’s been a lot of work on my skating,” said Slavin, the brother of Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin. “I’m not the prettiest skater. It’s not always the most effective way when you’re not pretty, so in the offseasons my skating is my main focus.”

This past summer, Slavin participated in his agent’s summer camp which had a skating coach, which he said really helped him improve.

“You can never have too perfect of a stride, right?” Slavin said. “There’s always more ways to improve your stride and get the most efficiency out of each stride. So that’s kind of where the focus is.”

Slavin doesn’t need to be told how important an efficient stride is. Whether it’s the NHL or in the AHL with the IceHogs, a hockey season is a grind and every bit of energy helps.

Wasteful skating doesn’t.

“It’s a long season, right? Eighty-two games, so you’ve got to be the most efficient in every stride that you have,” said Slavin, whose head hit the ice Sunday and required stitches. “That way you don’t wear yourself out in the first 20-30 games. It’s a long season. Each stride is more work to be done. If you’re efficient in each stride you don’t have to take as many, right?”

What Slavin is doing earned him his first NHL recall, though he joins a team that’s struggling to score goals. On Tuesday, the Hawks moved out-of-favor forward Dylan Strome to a line with Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach. Jonathan Toews, meanwhile, told interim coach Derek King he doesn’t want to be in the “bumper” spot on the power play.

Slavin won’t be depended on to score goals. Instead, if he gets into a game, he’ll be asked to keep doing what he was in Rockford: win puck battles and use his 6-3, 189-pound frame.

“It’s nice to reward these kids that are working hard and playing well,” King said.

Hard work has been a theme for Slavin, who had to scrap to make the NHL after being a seventh-round pick in the 2018 draft. But Slavin didn’t think his draft slot meant all that much.

“I was a seventh-round pick, but I don’t think being drafted says anything,” Slavin said. “That’s when the work starts. I kind of took it as that and I just went to work after that.”

King recognized that work ethic.

“All of these guys, whether you’re a first-rounder or not or other rounds, they work hard, but I think coaches seem to gravitate to these seventh- or sixth-rounders that… they push themselves,” King said. “They know how to compete all the time. That’s what he does. He’s earned it. We’re rewarding him and I’m looking forward to seeing him at this level.”

NOTES: Rockford announced top prospect Lukas Reichel is in concussion protocol and will not play in its game Wednesday after crashing into the boards during the third period Sunday. Interim IceHogs coach Anders Sorensen had no timetable for Reichel’s return to the lineup.

“I saw him today, he was in good spirits,” Sorensen said. “He said under the circumstances he’s feeling pretty good.”

* Hawks defenseman Calvin de Haan did not practice due to lower back soreness. King said de Haan is day-to-day, and there was no point to have him push through it for practice.

“It’s probably just old age I guess creeping up on him,” King joked about the 30-year-old blueliner.

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December 01, 2021 at 07:32AM
https://chicago.suntimes.com/blackhawks/2021/11/30/22811020/chicago-blackhawks-reward-josiah-slavins-hard-work-with-nhl-call

Blackhawks reward Josiah Slavin’s hard work with first NHL call - Chicago Sun-Times

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

The Hard-Won Achievements of Mary Cocaine - The New Yorker

Translation Is Hard Work. Lydia Davis Makes It Thrilling. - The New York Times

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Lydia Davis learned German after being plopped into a classroom in Graz, Austria, at the age of 7. Her immersion began at home with breakfast: If she woke early, she received Schokolade mit Schlag (hot chocolate with whipped cream), and if she slept late she got Schokolade ohne Schlag (no whipped cream). After moving back to the United States not long after, she studied French, Latin and Italian. A lifetime of work as a translator (and novelist and short story writer and essayist) has followed.

Her new book, “Essays Two,” is organized around translation. As Davis points out in a preface, the book is more focused in its material than was her previous collection, “Essays One.” With “Two,” it helps to have a pre-existing interest in translation, or at least a general curiosity about language, whereas to enjoy the earlier collection you needed only a pre-existing interest in “stuff.” But whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising.

In addition to translating Proust and Flaubert, she has tackled “books of all degrees of excellence and nonexcellence, of interest and no interest” — among them a sentimental biography of Marie Curie, art catalogs, travel essays and histories of China. Whatever the source, Davis finds innumerable joys in its conversion. The first essay here enumerates 21 of these pleasures. Translation, she notes, puts a person in intimate communion with an author, removes the anxiety of invention that attends most writing work and presents eternal (but often solvable) riddles. It also offers a form of hard-core armchair travel: To puzzle through “Madame Bovary” is to shoot through a wormhole from America of the 21st century into France of the 19th.

In an essay about translating Proust’s letters, Davis voyages to the apartment where he wrote much of “In Search of Lost Time.” The apartment has not been maintained as Proust left it, with his furniture and artifacts intact, but has instead become the location of a bank. Davis receives a tour of the writer’s former apartment from an employee who occasionally has to run off and deal with banking questions. Client meetings are held in Proust’s bedroom, and the bank’s waiting room is where the writer once warehoused an unruly pile of inherited possessions. “An imaginative financier with a little information might be haunted, sitting next to the lone potted plant, by the lingering ghostly presence of a crowded accumulation of heavy fin de siècle furniture and bric-a-brac, imbued with Proust’s personal associations,” Davis writes.

Although she learned German by immersion, Davis’s preferred method of language acquisition is quite different, and, to an outside observer, demonically challenging: She finds a book published in a language that she does not fully or even partially understand and then tries to figure out what it means.

Lydia DavisTheo Cote

To improve her Spanish, she digs into a copy of “Las Aventuras de Tom Sawyer.” In some cases the decryption proves easy. Words like “plan” are the same in English and Spanish. In other cases she inductively reasons the meaning of a word after noticing it in different contexts. Hoja initially stumps her when it pops up in the phrase hoja de papel — “hoja of paper.” Later in the book, it occurs in the context of a tree. Finally, Huck wraps a dry hoja around something to make a cigarette, and Davis realizes that only one meaning would work as well with paper as with a tree or a cigarette: “leaf.” Of course, it would be possible to solve the hoja enigma in two seconds by plugging the word into Google, but that would destroy the fun.

Norwegian is a tougher case. For this, Davis selects a perversely difficult family saga by the writer Dag Solstad. At 426 pages, the novel consists of “almost unbroken blocks, with no chapters and few paragraph breaks.” Davis reads at a snail’s speed with a sharp pencil in hand, scribbling lists of vocabulary. The word sarkastisk (sarcastic) provides her with a trick for unlocking others: If she mentally replaces the k’s with c’s, Davis finds, certain foreign words become more easily deciphered: kusine is now legible as “cousin,” and kom as “come.”

Trying to learn a language from scratch by reading a book is like trying to write a complicated cake recipe by sitting and staring at the finished cake for several hundred hours. Is it the most efficient form of pedagogy? No, but Davis extracts endless thrills from the painstaking process. Her essays do a beautiful job of transmitting that satisfaction to the reader, although I was occasionally tempted to exercise my skimming muscles in places where she dove deep into the weeds. Skimming, however, would be the wrong move in a book that contains an incredible amount of life-enhancing morsels, such as the fact that the sound of a sneeze in Norwegian is spelled atsjoo.

In a piece about the French city of Arles, we learn that Arles not only receives the icy northwesterly mistral wind that is rumored to drive people insane, but that there are old diagrams called “wind roses” that include up to 32 named winds, each blowing from a specific direction. Unless you are a person whose activities heavily involve wind — mariner, surfer, kite enthusiast — it is unlikely that you will have considered such nuances of air movement in your daily life. “Never too soon to start!” you might think, considering whether you might be able to chart a wind rose tailored to your own neighborhood.

Davis’s essays are packed with these windows of opportunity to think more deeply — or at all — about many subjects. Others include paving stones, Gascon folk tales, parataxis, punctuation, cognates, medieval architecture and sheepdogs.

I enjoyed the book’s plenitude so much that I wasn’t distracted by its squat physical shape, which is adorable to hold but designed in such a way that the book tries to flip itself shut as you read. No amount of violent spine-cracking would break the object’s resistance, and around Page 300 I turned a corner and became charmed by its antagonistic construction. I will read you and you will like it, I warned my copy of “Essays Two.” And lo, I liked it, too.

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November 30, 2021 at 05:00PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/books/review-lydia-davis-essays-two.html

Translation Is Hard Work. Lydia Davis Makes It Thrilling. - The New York Times

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

New York, hit hard by the first COVID-19 wave, prepares for omicron variant - NPR

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New York has already declared a state of emergency ahead of the expected arrival of the latest coronavirus variant — to try to corral its spread.

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November 30, 2021 at 05:01PM
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059990266/new-york-hit-hard-by-the-first-covid-19-wave-prepares-for-omicron-variant

New York, hit hard by the first COVID-19 wave, prepares for omicron variant - NPR

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Netflix's 'Love Hard' marks the beginning of Christmas-themed romantic comedies - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily

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Every year, the holiday season brings a yearly onslaught of Christmas-themed romantic comedies of varying degrees of quality and originality. This craze seems to infect every facet of social media until it reaches its zenith on Christmas Eve. For weeks, a plethora of overpriced streaming services desperately scramble to release a romantic comedy that can achieve the Christmas classic status pioneered by the oddly depressing yet popular film “Love, Actually.” Netflix’s “Love Hard” kicks off this seasonal tradition with a bang of remarkably below-average intensity. 

The movie’s protagonist, Natalie — played by "The Vampire Diaries" star Nina Dobrev — travels to Lake Placid, N.Y. for Christmas to surprise her online boyfriend, Josh — played by actor and stand-up comedian Jimmy O. Yang. The catch — she has never met him.

Upon her arrival, she realises that she has been catfished, and, from there, the signature romantic comedy shenanigans ensue. Although the movie’s premise and plot lack originality, Dobrev and Yang do have considerable chemistry as reluctant friends throughout most of the movie. Their bickering and banter is surprisingly entertaining, even if the situations their characters find themselves in are obnoxiously predictable. 

The movie begins with the blockbuster’s favorite tool for lazy exposition — a voiceover by the film’s protagonist. Although Dobrev’s feminine and charmingly gravelly voice softens the blow of this cliche, it does not suspend the spectator’s disbelief that a woman that looks like her cannot find a man in downtown Los Angeles — the land of incredibly attractive, but perhaps a little self-obsessed, young bachelors.

Throughout the first 20 minutes, the viewer is subjected to the comically annoying boss and the funny best friend who only exists to give the protagonist love advice. If that isn’t enough typical blockbuster mediocrity, the viewer is also forced to endure a video montage of the couple flirting over text set to slow emotional music.

Although this film is decidedly average in terms of both plot and character development, it does have a few redeeming comedic moments. The revelation of Natalie’s online boyfriend’s actual appearance, for example, is fairly amusing. The camera slowly pans from Josh’s feet all the way up to his face as Natalie’s expression changes from intense excitement to extreme shock and disappointment. This is all set to The Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms,” which definitely adds a fairly charming element of self-awareness to the scene.

The movie’s peak in terms of originality and comedy takes place when Natalie, depressed by the news that her potential soulmate is not who she expected, takes a random shot at a karaoke bar that later turns out to contain kiwi, which kickstarts an allergic reaction. When she faces the audience to sing Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love,” the viewer is served with quite a jump-scare as her face has swelled to an extreme degree. This moment had a considerably good build-up with Natalie’s back turned from the camera for the early portion of the song, and the climax of the scene when she turns around elicits an immediate reaction of shock and eventual pity from the viewer.

From this point on, there are very few solidly comedic moments in the film — save for a couple good quips from Josh’s grandma like “The pen is mightier than the penis” or “She has seen more ass than a church pew.” The only thing stopping this film from being unwatchable in its rising action portion is the bickering and banter between Natalie and Josh, which stays believable and amusing throughout most of the film.

Although they do not have any palpable romantic chemistry, their dynamic as friends is pleasant to watch. Outside of this, Josh’s subplot about gaining respect from his family is uninteresting at its best and cringe-worthy at its worst. Natalie’s attempts to seduce the man from Josh’s fake dating profile pictures are ridiculous and imply an absurd lack of self-awareness from an otherwise intelligent protagonist.

Additionally, it wouldn’t be a corny Netflix Christmas movie without one of the main leads having a quirky hobby that their love interest helps them realize could be a business venture. For this film, Josh has a passion for making “masculine candles” — because buying a lavender candle is apparently emasculating. Even performances by solid actors like Yang and Dobrev cannot prevent the viewer from seeing the notion of a “masculine candle maker” as frankly bizarre and completely unrealistic as a career.   

Finally, the film ends with Natalie’s “Love, Actually”-themed confession of love to Josh. Although this moment reeks of cliche and money-grabbing references, Dobrev and Yang’s performances are believable to the point of slightly warming the cold heart of the cynical viewer, but not to the point of enabling them to overlook the creepiness of a relationship that begins with catfishing.

To conclude, this film is predictable to the point of almost being unwatchable. Although the two main leads do add a charming dynamic to the movie, the uninteresting plot and poor character development prevent it from being anything more than something to put on in the background while cooking this holiday season.

Sadly, this is just the first in a long line of mediocre Christmas movies that Netflix and other streaming services will relentlessly pump out for the next few weeks. So buckle up, the boring Christmas rom-com craze is upon us.

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November 30, 2021 at 03:44AM
https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2021/11/netflixs-love-hard-marks-the-beginning-of-christmas-themed-romantic-comedies

Netflix's 'Love Hard' marks the beginning of Christmas-themed romantic comedies - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Knicks removing Kemba Walker from rotation: A hard pill to swallow, but the right move for New York - CBSSports.com

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The New York Knicks have had an elephant in the room all season: Their starters are worse than their backups. The starting lineup of Kemba Walker, Evan Fournier, R.J. Barrett, Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson, which has logged the third-most non-garbage-time possessions of any five-man unit in the league, has gotten spit-roasted by 15.9 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass, entering play on Monday. 

Meanwhile, the all-bench mob of Derrick Rose, Immanuel Quickley, Alec Burks, Obi Toppin and Taj Gibson, New York's second-most voluminous lineup, is thrashing opponents by over 30 points per 100, per CTG. 

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The stink is coming from the heretofore starting backcourt of Walker and Fournier. As long as those two are off the court, no matter who else is playing, the Knicks are plus-15.6 per 100. It can be narrowed down further to Walker. As long as he's not playing, Knicks lineups are plus-14 per 100. 

So it seems like a simple answer on paper: Don't play Walker, who is coming dangerously close to the "he's finished" portion of his career. In real life, that's not an easy decision to make. Walker is loved by everyone. It's hard for a coach to pull the plug on a fading star, but on Monday, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau told reporters he will indeed bite the bullet and remove Walker from the rotation.

That doesn't mean Walker won't be starting anymore (that job now belongs to Burks). That means he won't be playing anymore. 

The "tough to play three small guards together" part of this statement is at once true and a euphemistic spin on the harsh reality of Walker's decline. If Walker was still the star scorer/creator he used to be, or even anywhere close, you'd find a way to work around the size. But he unfortunately just isn't a good player anymore, or really, even a replacement-level one. 

The season numbers don't look "glue him to the bench" bad. He's shooting 41 percent on five 3-pointers a game. But you have to watch him. He can't defend his shadow. Once nearly impossible to stay in front of, he's no longer any sort of downhill threat, which bogs down New York's half-court offense, already short on collective burst, into a parking-lot traffic jam, and they basically never get out on the break with Walker on the floor. 

Over his last 11 games, Walker is averaging under 10 points on 27 percent 3-point shooting. During that stretch he's failed to score in double digits eight times, and the Knicks have been outscored by a total of 101 points in his minutes. Something had to give. It's a hard pill to swallow, again, because Walker is one of the league's true good guys. But the game just isn't there anymore for him, and this is the NBA. It doesn't matter what you used to be. Or at least it shouldn't. Right now, this is the right move for the Knicks. 

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November 30, 2021 at 02:00AM
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/knicks-removing-kemba-walker-from-rotation-a-hard-pill-to-swallow-but-the-right-move-for-new-york/

Knicks removing Kemba Walker from rotation: A hard pill to swallow, but the right move for New York - CBSSports.com

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Omicron Is Hitting Markets Less Hard Than Other Covid Variants - The New York Times

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Investors are re-pricing the risks of the latest coronavirus variant.

Stock markets took a hit from the latest coronavirus variant news, but they’re already showing signs of recovery.Koji Sasahara/Associated Press

Re-pricing the pandemic

Scientists, doctors and public health officials are still assessing the danger posed by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, but markets are already jumping to conclusions. On Friday, markets fell on fears that the fast-spreading strain of the coronavirus first detected in South Africa, and which has now been found in more than a dozen countries, could throw the global economic recovery into reverse. Many countries have banned travel from countries in Southern Africa, while Israel, Japan and Morocco closed their borders to all outside travelers.

But as more information emerged about the new “variant of concern,” the World Health Organization’s most serious category, markets began to rise. So far today European markets are up, and U.S. futures suggest that markets will also recover some — but not all — of Friday’s losses.

What do we know about Omicron? The variant has 50 mutations not seen in combination before. That has spurred fears that Omicron could render existing treatments less effective, but Moderna and Pfizer indicated yesterday that they could quickly tweak their vaccines. What’s more, some early signs suggest that while the variant could be more contagious than prior ones, it may not lead to more severe illness. “If this turns out to be true, this is bullish not bearish for markets,” the financier Bill Ackman tweeted yesterday.

Covid-related stock market drops are getting milder and shorter. Back in February 2020, the S&P 500 fell 3.4 percent in one day and then continued to slide for a month and a half. In October 2020, a resurgence of cases led to a one-day market drop of 3.5 percent, but markets rebounded within two weeks. Friday’s decline was 2.3 percent, with a rebound beginning the next trading day.

Bond and commodity investors are pricing in new scenarios. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond is trading just above 1.5 percent, down from a recent high of nearly 1.7. A drop in bond yields tends to suggest lower inflation on the horizon, not higher, as has been the fear for months. That implies more subdued economic activity, which has also been reflected in plunging oil prices, with W.T.I. crude, the U.S. benchmark, bouncing up a bit today but trading more than 15 percent lower than a month ago.

In all, the recent market turmoil shows how dependent the economy is on the path of the pandemic, and how quickly sentiment can change with every twist and turn in our understanding of the virus.

Further reading:

• “How Omicron Variant Rattled the World in One Week”

• Are Omicron-related travel bans unfairly punishing poorer countries?

• Assuming the worst about each new variant isn’t a response based on science, David Leonhardt of The Morning newsletter writes.

• An obscure cryptocurrency called Omicron soared to a new high.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

Britain will reportedly demand that Meta undo a takeover. U.K. antitrust regulators will order Facebook’s parent company to unwind its $400 million acquisition of the online image platform Giphy, the Financial Times reports. Meanwhile, the E.U.’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, urged the bloc’s policymakers to bolster rules to regulate Big Tech.

Jared Kushner struggles in setting up his next act. The son-in-law of Donald Trump is using Middle East connections made during his White House tenure to raise money for a new investment fund, The Times reports. But a number of countries, like Qatar and the U.A.E., have declined to invest.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial begins today. The companion of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has been charged with several felonies, including sex trafficking of underage girls. Maxwell’s trial is seen by many as a proxy courtroom reckoning for Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019.

President Biden’s nomination for a top banking regulator looks doomed. Five centrist Democratic senators reportedly told the White House that they won’t support Saule Omarova as the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to Axios.

Tributes pour in for Stephen Sondheim. The songwriter, who helped reshape the American songbook with musicals like “West Side Story,” “Company” and “Sweeney Todd,” died on Friday at 91. Encomiums and appraisals quickly followed: “He was like Shakespeare,” said the actress Bernadette Peters.

Omicron: the questions for business

Although there is a lot we don’t know about the Omicron variant, business leaders are wearily asking themselves the same questions they did during previous surges of the coronavirus.

Will there be new lockdowns or vaccine mandates? Some jumped on the Omicron variant as an opportunity to urge airlines to require proof of vaccination and testing for passengers. The variant could also put pressure on companies reluctant to impose vaccine mandates on employees. As for government measures, Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News it was “too early to say” whether there needed to be new lockdowns or mandates.

What does this mean for conferences and in-person gatherings? There’s a full lineup of events this winter, with organizers hoping to get back on track after previous cancellations and postponements. In early January, CES is scheduled to return to Las Vegas in-person, while the World Economic Forum in Davos is set to take place in person later that month. The Beijing Winter Olympics in February will allow spectators, though only from mainland China. South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, is set to return in-person in March. In Britain, new rules come into effect tomorrow that require all travelers to isolate on arrival until they receive a negative test result; similar policies elsewhere would make attending conferences and other gatherings more difficult, a potential setback for airlines that were just starting to see a rebound.

Are workers ever going back to the office? Beyond the immediate question about office holiday parties, there’s the bigger question about the fate of offices next year and beyond. Many companies have already set and delayed their return dates multiple times. Several, including Wells Fargo, Google and Facebook parent Meta, are planning to bring their workers back to the office in January. Will they postpone a return date again or simply order workers back? Is the prospect of a prolonged pandemic enough to persuade some companies to switch to a permanent form of flexibility or will they continue to muddle through with imperfect hybrid setups?

---

“Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself.”

— Shannon Abloh, widow of the barrier-breaking fashion designer Virgil Abloh, quoting her husband, who died on Sunday at age 41 of cancer. He founded his own brand, Off-White, as well as taking on a wide-ranging role at LVMH, making him the most powerful Black executive in the most powerful luxury group in the world.

---

The week ahead

► Labor market snapshot: On Friday, the Labor Department will release its report on jobs in November. The most recent report showed that the economy added more than 500,000 jobs in October after months of disappointing job figures. Still, 4.2 million fewer Americans were working in October than before pandemic lockdowns.

► Theranos trial: Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up, will continue to testify as she defends herself against fraud charges. In three days of testimony last week, she painted herself as someone whose best intentions were misinterpreted.

► Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday: Americans returned to in-person shopping with gusto on Black Friday. But as Wirecutter notes, many shopping deals will extend through today, known as Cyber Monday. And for those who are more inclined to spend on charitable causes, there’s Giving Tuesday.

---

Exclusive: More boards are following the money

Directors at public companies are paying closer attention than ever to political spending, according to a new report shared exclusively with DealBook. Each year, the Center for Political Accountability and the Wharton School’s Zicklin Center for Business Ethics ranks S&P 500 companies by the disclosure and accountability policies that govern their political spending. This year, the average S&P 500 company’s score on political disclosure and accountability rose to 54 percent, up from 50 percent last year.

Companies are “lifting the veil” on their political spending, the report said, responding to a greater awareness of corporate America’s political influence. This past proxy season, shareholder resolutions seeking greater disclosure on spending passed at a higher rate than ever. And companies were called out for channeling money to lawmakers and organizations that challenged the 2020 presidential election result.

Boards are more aware of the consequences of political spending. Greater oversight at the director level shows that S&P 500 companies recognize the importance of these decisions:

• General board oversight of political spending is now in place at 295 companies, up around 14 percent from 2020.

• Board committee review of direct political spending is the policy at 255 companies, up more than 12 percent.

• Board committee review of payments to trade associations and other tax-exempt groups rose to 228, up almost 15 percent.

Aligning rhetoric and spending is the next step. To top the index, companies must have a process to avoid supporting causes that undermine their stated principles. Only one — Intel — “has distinguished itself by making public a policy to explicitly steer clear of conflict or misalignment between its core values and its political donations,” according to the report. Intel stopped donating to members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election, and now reviews lawmakers’ public statements, in addition to their voting records, for alignment with its corporate values.

Cash is flowing freely into the 2022 elections, testing these policies. House members have raised $128 million, more than double the sum at this point in the cycle two years ago. Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability, told DealBook that demanding greater transparency of how and why these donations are approved is the best way to sharpen the focus on the consequences on corporate political spending.

THE SPEED READ

Deals

• Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O., sold nearly half of his holdings in the company last week. (Regulatory filing)

• Private equity firms have struck nearly $1 trillion worth of leveraged buyouts so far this year, a record. (WSJ)

• Half of this year’s big I.P.O.s have sunk below their debut prices. (FT)

• Short sellers have bounced back from their shellacking during the meme-stock boom. (Insider)

Policy

• Lina Khan’s battle to rein in Big Tech. (New Yorker)

• European countries are looking to expand nuclear energy programs to help reach ambitious climate goals. (NYT)

• Democratic lawmakers plan to advance a $250 billion bill aimed at bolstering America’s competitiveness against China, but Beijing is threatening retribution if it passes. (Politico)

• The actor Matthew McConaughey said he’s not running for governor of Texas “at this moment.” (NYT)

• Top buyout firms like Blackstone and Apollo haven’t signed onto a financial industry pledge to cut carbon emissions. (Bloomberg)

Best of the rest

• Many millennials are dealing with high inflation for the first time. (NYT)

• The rise of a furniture hub in North Carolina illustrates how supply-chain woes are reshaping local economies. (NYT)

• Uber security executives wrongly accused of breaking the law continue to face blowback, even as the company has moved on. (NYT)

• On “Succession” and what it says about the difficulty of passing a wealth tax. (Politico)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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November 29, 2021 at 07:50PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/business/dealbook/stock-markets-omicron-variant.html

Omicron Is Hitting Markets Less Hard Than Other Covid Variants - The New York Times

https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

Omicron Is Hitting Markets Less Hard Than Other Covid Variants - The New York Times

hard.indah.link

Investors are re-pricing the risks of the latest coronavirus variant.

Stock markets took a hit from the latest coronavirus variant news, but they’re already showing signs of recovery.Koji Sasahara/Associated Press

Re-pricing the pandemic

Scientists, doctors and public health officials are still assessing the danger posed by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, but markets are already jumping to conclusions. On Friday, markets fell on fears that the fast-spreading strain of the coronavirus first detected in South Africa, and which has now been found in more than a dozen countries, could throw the global economic recovery into reverse. Many countries have banned travel from countries in Southern Africa, while Israel, Japan and Morocco closed their borders to all outside travelers.

But as more information emerged about the new “variant of concern,” the World Health Organization’s most serious category, markets began to rise. So far today European markets are up, and U.S. futures suggest that markets will also recover some — but not all — of Friday’s losses.

What do we know about Omicron? The variant has 50 mutations not seen in combination before. That has spurred fears that Omicron could render existing treatments less effective, but Moderna and Pfizer indicated yesterday that they could quickly tweak their vaccines. What’s more, some early signs suggest that while the variant could be more contagious than prior ones, it may not lead to more severe illness. “If this turns out to be true, this is bullish not bearish for markets,” the financier Bill Ackman tweeted yesterday.

Covid-related stock market drops are getting milder and shorter. Back in February 2020, the S&P 500 fell 3.4 percent in one day and then continued to slide for a month and a half. In October 2020, a resurgence of cases led to a one-day market drop of 3.5 percent, but markets rebounded within two weeks. Friday’s decline was 2.3 percent, with a rebound beginning the next trading day.

Bond and commodity investors are pricing in new scenarios. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond is trading just above 1.5 percent, down from a recent high of nearly 1.7. A drop in bond yields tends to suggest lower inflation on the horizon, not higher, as has been the fear for months. That implies more subdued economic activity, which has also been reflected in plunging oil prices, with W.T.I. crude, the U.S. benchmark, bouncing up a bit today but trading more than 15 percent lower than a month ago.

In all, the recent market turmoil shows how dependent the economy is on the path of the pandemic, and how quickly sentiment can change with every twist and turn in our understanding of the virus.

Further reading:

• “How Omicron Variant Rattled the World in One Week”

• Are Omicron-related travel bans unfairly punishing poorer countries?

• Assuming the worst about each new variant isn’t a response based on science, David Leonhardt of The Morning newsletter writes.

• An obscure cryptocurrency called Omicron soared to a new high.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

Britain will reportedly demand that Meta undo a takeover. U.K. antitrust regulators will order Facebook’s parent company to unwind its $400 million acquisition of the online image platform Giphy, the Financial Times reports. Meanwhile, the E.U.’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, urged the bloc’s policymakers to bolster rules to regulate Big Tech.

Jared Kushner struggles in setting up his next act. The son-in-law of Donald Trump is using Middle East connections made during his White House tenure to raise money for a new investment fund, The Times reports. But a number of countries, like Qatar and the U.A.E., have declined to invest.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial begins today. The companion of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has been charged with several felonies, including sex trafficking of underage girls. Maxwell’s trial is seen by many as a proxy courtroom reckoning for Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019.

President Biden’s nomination for a top banking regulator looks doomed. Five centrist Democratic senators reportedly told the White House that they won’t support Saule Omarova as the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to Axios.

Tributes pour in for Stephen Sondheim. The songwriter, who helped reshape the American songbook with musicals like “West Side Story,” “Company” and “Sweeney Todd,” died on Friday at 91. Encomiums and appraisals quickly followed: “He was like Shakespeare,” said the actress Bernadette Peters.

Omicron: the questions for business

Although there is a lot we don’t know about the Omicron variant, business leaders are wearily asking themselves the same questions they did during previous surges of the coronavirus.

Will there be new lockdowns or vaccine mandates? Some jumped on the Omicron variant as an opportunity to urge airlines to require proof of vaccination and testing for passengers. The variant could also put pressure on companies reluctant to impose vaccine mandates on employees. As for government measures, Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News it was “too early to say” whether there needed to be new lockdowns or mandates.

What does this mean for conferences and in-person gatherings? There’s a full lineup of events this winter, with organizers hoping to get back on track after previous cancellations and postponements. In early January, CES is scheduled to return to Las Vegas in-person, while the World Economic Forum in Davos is set to take place in person later that month. The Beijing Winter Olympics in February will allow spectators, though only from mainland China. South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, is set to return in-person in March. In Britain, new rules come into effect tomorrow that require all travelers to isolate on arrival until they receive a negative test result; similar policies elsewhere would make attending conferences and other gatherings more difficult, a potential setback for airlines that were just starting to see a rebound.

Are workers ever going back to the office? Beyond the immediate question about office holiday parties, there’s the bigger question about the fate of offices next year and beyond. Many companies have already set and delayed their return dates multiple times. Several, including Wells Fargo, Google and Facebook parent Meta, are planning to bring their workers back to the office in January. Will they postpone a return date again or simply order workers back? Is the prospect of a prolonged pandemic enough to persuade some companies to switch to a permanent form of flexibility or will they continue to muddle through with imperfect hybrid setups?

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“Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself.”

— Shannon Abloh, widow of the barrier-breaking fashion designer Virgil Abloh, quoting her husband, who died on Sunday at age 41 of cancer. He founded his own brand, Off-White, as well as taking on a wide-ranging role at LVMH, making him the most powerful Black executive in the most powerful luxury group in the world.

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The week ahead

► Labor market snapshot: On Friday, the Labor Department will release its report on jobs in November. The most recent report showed that the economy added more than 500,000 jobs in October after months of disappointing job figures. Still, 4.2 million fewer Americans were working in October than before pandemic lockdowns.

► Theranos trial: Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up, will continue to testify as she defends herself against fraud charges. In three days of testimony last week, she painted herself as someone whose best intentions were misinterpreted.

► Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday: Americans returned to in-person shopping with gusto on Black Friday. But as Wirecutter notes, many shopping deals will extend through today, known as Cyber Monday. And for those who are more inclined to spend on charitable causes, there’s Giving Tuesday.

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Exclusive: More boards are following the money

Directors at public companies are paying closer attention than ever to political spending, according to a new report shared exclusively with DealBook. Each year, the Center for Political Accountability and the Wharton School’s Zicklin Center for Business Ethics ranks S&P 500 companies by the disclosure and accountability policies that govern their political spending. This year, the average S&P 500 company’s score on political disclosure and accountability rose to 54 percent, up from 50 percent last year.

Companies are “lifting the veil” on their political spending, the report said, responding to a greater awareness of corporate America’s political influence. This past proxy season, shareholder resolutions seeking greater disclosure on spending passed at a higher rate than ever. And companies were called out for channeling money to lawmakers and organizations that challenged the 2020 presidential election result.

Boards are more aware of the consequences of political spending. Greater oversight at the director level shows that S&P 500 companies recognize the importance of these decisions:

• General board oversight of political spending is now in place at 295 companies, up around 14 percent from 2020.

• Board committee review of direct political spending is the policy at 255 companies, up more than 12 percent.

• Board committee review of payments to trade associations and other tax-exempt groups rose to 228, up almost 15 percent.

Aligning rhetoric and spending is the next step. To top the index, companies must have a process to avoid supporting causes that undermine their stated principles. Only one — Intel — “has distinguished itself by making public a policy to explicitly steer clear of conflict or misalignment between its core values and its political donations,” according to the report. Intel stopped donating to members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election, and now reviews lawmakers’ public statements, in addition to their voting records, for alignment with its corporate values.

Cash is flowing freely into the 2022 elections, testing these policies. House members have raised $128 million, more than double the sum at this point in the cycle two years ago. Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability, told DealBook that demanding greater transparency of how and why these donations are approved is the best way to sharpen the focus on the consequences on corporate political spending.

THE SPEED READ

Deals

• Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O., sold nearly half of his holdings in the company last week. (Regulatory filing)

• Private equity firms have struck nearly $1 trillion worth of leveraged buyouts so far this year, a record. (WSJ)

• Half of this year’s big I.P.O.s have sunk below their debut prices. (FT)

• Short sellers have bounced back from their shellacking during the meme-stock boom. (Insider)

Policy

• Lina Khan’s battle to rein in Big Tech. (New Yorker)

• European countries are looking to expand nuclear energy programs to help reach ambitious climate goals. (NYT)

• Democratic lawmakers plan to advance a $250 billion bill aimed at bolstering America’s competitiveness against China, but Beijing is threatening retribution if it passes. (Politico)

• The actor Matthew McConaughey said he’s not running for governor of Texas “at this moment.” (NYT)

• Top buyout firms like Blackstone and Apollo haven’t signed onto a financial industry pledge to cut carbon emissions. (Bloomberg)

Best of the rest

• Many millennials are dealing with high inflation for the first time. (NYT)

• The rise of a furniture hub in North Carolina illustrates how supply-chain woes are reshaping local economies. (NYT)

• Uber security executives wrongly accused of breaking the law continue to face blowback, even as the company has moved on. (NYT)

• On “Succession” and what it says about the difficulty of passing a wealth tax. (Politico)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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November 29, 2021 at 07:14PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/business/dealbook/markets-omicron-variant.html

Omicron Is Hitting Markets Less Hard Than Other Covid Variants - The New York Times

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This is hands-down the best Cyber Monday hard drive deal - Creative Bloq

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Incredibly, the best deal we've seen on an external drive over the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday is still live, getting you a whopping 52% off a super-fast, super spacious and brilliantly compact 1TB SSD external hard drive. This is the kind of deal you'd think would be gone pretty quickly, but despite appearing on Black Friday, it's continued into Cyber Monday. If you're quick, you can still grab the SanDisk 1TB SSD reduced from $249.99 to $119.99 at Amazon – a saving of $130.

And don't worry if you're in the UK, because this Black Friday hard drive deal still has a few hours left to run there too. Again you get the SanDisk 1TB SSD for less than half price – just £99.99 at Amazon in the UK.

We reckon these are THE hard drive deals of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but they're not the only options. If you prioritise space over speed and prefer an HDD, this half-price deal on a WD 2TB HDD for just $54.99 at Best Buy is also hugely impressive, saving you $55.

Make sure to check out our guide to Black Friday external hard drive deals for more. For savings on other products see our guide to Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021.

Best Cyber Monday external hard drive deal: US

Best ongoing Black Friday external hard drive deals: UK

Here are some other external hard drive options that might suit you, wherever you are in the world... 

More Black Friday external hard drive deals

Cyber Monday Sale ends in

Check out more Cyber Monday Sale deals at

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November 29, 2021 at 08:46PM
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This is hands-down the best Cyber Monday hard drive deal - Creative Bloq

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What merchandise might be hard to find these holidays? - cleveland.com

hard.indah.link

CLEVELAND, Ohio – It isn’t exactly news that some things may be things are hard to get this holiday season. The real question is “What will the next shortage be?”

But if the recent past is any indication — or if supply-chain issues don’t ease up — there’s a few categories of items that are already expected to be in short supply.

Here are some of items that have been running low:

Anything with a semiconductor chip

There’s still a shortage of semiconductor chips, and those little things are in lots of presents.

Semiconductor chips are in everything from computers and cars to toothbrushes and tumble dryers. According to a report from WIRED, the shortage isn’t going away quickly.

WIRED reports that demand is growing faster than chip makers can keep up with. Things like 5G phones or cloud computing are spiking the need, as well the pent-up demand that has drove retail sales .

U.S.-imposed sanctions on Chinese companies like Huawei, a manufacturer of smartphones and networking gear, also prompted some Chinese firms to hoard supply, according to WIRED.

Building new factories is also costly and time-consuming. For chipmakers, it can cost billions and take years to increase their capacity.

The semiconductor shortage was recently blamed for the shortage of vehicles and new vehicles sales at Northeast Ohio car dealerships. The Play Station 5, last year’s hard-to-get item, is still in short supply, CBS News reports.

Bicycles

The bike shortage isn’t new, but it’s still here, says Jane Alley, general manager of Fridrich Bicycle.

She said they sold out in May 2020, and everything that’s trickled in since then was ordered that month.

Alley said the store had about 100 bikes in stock, but would normally have around 1,000.

Bicycling.com reports the shortage could last into 2022, saying the supply-chain and the time it takes to build new factories are to blame.

Clothing & Shoes

Luxury clothing and shoe stores in the Cleveland-area said they’ve had trouble getting items in.

Wally Naymon of Kilgore Trout said recently it’s been woven shirts, but it’s been different items at different times. JB Dunn, of J3 Clothing, said he’s vendors are dealing with their own shortage of raw materials.

“We have a gentleman who makes shoes for us in Italy,” Dunn said. “He said ‘Listen, I can send you as many shoes as you want. They just won’t have soles on them.’”

Meanwhile Dan Ungar of Mar-Lou Shoes has his vendors telling him the exact ship his stuff is stuck on.

Reuters reports that the shortage of new clothes is actually bumping up sales for second-hand clothing stores. According to the trade group, 85% of toys sold in the U.S. are manufactured in Asia.

Toys

Toy companies have been warning of shortages since early October. Issac Larian, CEO of MGA Entertainment (maker of L.O.L. dolls and Little Tikes), told CNBC power outages in China, a resin shortage and higher labor costs are straining the toy supply.

The Toy Association, an American trade group that represents retailers and manufactures, has cited the backup in ports as a leading cause in the shortage.

Alcohol

Whether it’s a liquor that needs to age in a barrel, or a craft beer headed into a can. It could be harder to find.

Fox Business reported that breweries are dealing with a “candemic,” saying beer makers are dealing with a shortage of cans now since production was driven higher by a shift to curbside pickup.

Many companies are also dealing with a glass jar and bottle shortage, reports NPR. David Ozgo, chief economist for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, told NPR that some distilleries were having a hard time packaging their products.

“We’re definitely hearing that there’s a shortage of bottles,” Ozgo said. “We encourage anybody that wants a special bottle for Christmas to start shopping for it now because you might have to make two or three trips to your local retailer.”

Some liquors generally have to age, meaning production can’t just increase on a dime to meet demand. Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky, said on its website that it “will still be a few years before bourbon supply catches up with demand.” This is despite a $1.2 billion expansion.

“While we are producing and shipping a record amount of product, we understand the frustration from fans that our brands aren’t easy to find or readily available,” said Sara Saunders, vice president of Marketing at the distillery.

“We take pride in the quality of our product above all else, and we believe that there is no substitute for aging. Unfortunately, this lengthens the lead time of getting product into consumers’ hands.”

Previous coverage

Profits getting leaner for Northeast Ohio barbeque joints as meat prices rise

Some gifts will be hard to find as national and Greater Cleveland retailers still deal with shortages for all sorts of reasons

Just how early has Black Friday been moved up and why?

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November 29, 2021 at 10:29PM
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2021/11/what-merchandise-might-be-hard-to-find-these-holidays.html

What merchandise might be hard to find these holidays? - cleveland.com

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