In this week's wrapup we talk about Amazon buying MGM, China's three child policy, Juhi Chawla's crusade against 5G, Cyberattacks and Unhealthy packaged food.
But if you want to check out the Markets edition this week before you go about reading the wrapup, don't forget to click the link here.
Why did Amazon buy MGM Studios?
Amazon can only turn consistent profits when people stay loyal to the brand. However, loyalty isn’t a feature of the e-commerce industry. People now have equal access to most platforms and they’ll choose a provider that offers them the base value for the buck. So what do you do? Well, perhaps the only solution then is to induce loyalty by tying customers to your brand perpetually. Amazon does it by leveraging Amazon prime memberships. You get faster shipping, free delivery on certain items, and a whole load of other perks. All you have to do is pay the entry fee and become a priority customer.
But to fuel its Prime engine, it needs Prime video and in extension, it needs content and lots of it. So, in Monday's Newsletter, we explain how Amazon might benefit by buying a century-old film studio like MGM.
Why do people have many many babies?
When people make sweeping assertions about birth rates and population control, they’re almost always wrong. Because fertility rates aren’t dependent on a single variable. Instead, there are multiple factors at play here. For instance, back in 1974, Dr. Karan Singh, a former parliamentarian, famously proclaimed — “development is the best contraceptive” while leading the Indian delegation at the World Population Conference in Bucharest.
And he was right. In most cases, you can see a clear correlation between income levels and fertility rates. As countries make development a priority, women choose to have fewer children. However, development is a catch-all term for so many things. And when you parse through each individual variable that affects development, you’ll see that there is incredible complexity underneath.
And while we wrote this article to explain China's new three child policy, it is really in fact a story on population control and extreme social experiments above all else. So if this sort of thing interests you, you should definitely read Tuesday's newsletter.
Should we stop the 5G rollout?
Conspiracy theories can originate in the unlikeliest of places. They can take shape organically and achieve some degree of acceptance inside small groups. However, when famous people lend their words to the cause and amplify the message, there’s no stopping it. And 5G has been no exception. People have propagated all kinds of new ideas on why 5G is detrimental to your cause. They’ve said it could induce headaches and migraines. They’ve proclaimed that the radiation could be harmful to humans and animals in large doses. They’ve said there’s a massive conspiracy to quell dissent despite the overwhelming evidence out there (which by the way doesn’t exist).
So on Wednesday, we tried to see if there's any scientific basis to these claims. You can read more here.
The age of Ransomware-as-a-service
On Sunday, JBS — the largest meat-processing company in the world admitted that some of their servers and IT systems had been compromised. The cyberattack crippled the company’s operations in North America and Australia and the temporary disruption threatened to send meat prices soaring. However, the good news is that it seems a vast majority of their plants might be back up and running soon. So the damage wasn’t as bad as most people initially presumed. But it does pose an interesting question — How dangerous are these cyberattacks? And should corporations now be afraid of cybercriminals?
You can read more in Thursday's Newsletter.
How to wage a war against junk food?
An internal report from Nestlé S.A seems to have implied that 60% of their products are unhealthy, according to a story in the Financial Times. Unhealthy how you ask?
Based on Australia’s health star rating system, a rather authoritative guide on ranking edible products. In their own words —
The Health Star Rating system is based on comparing products within similar food categories and allows us to quickly compare the general nutritional profile of foods within that category. For example, we can compare one breakfast cereal with another, one muesli bar with another, or one margarine spread with another… Health Star Ratings can help you choose between similar products which are typically displayed together (e.g. whole grain bread and white bread).
So in Friday’s newsletter, we talked about Nestlé’s confession, rating healthy foods, and perhaps implementing better labelling guidelines to make sure people know what they're eating.
Anyway, that's it from us this week. We will see you on Monday. Until then, don't forget to share this article on WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Twitter
