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The English Football Association’s chairman resigned. Greg Clarke apologized and stepped down from the role he’s held since 2016 after describing Black, Asian, and ethnic players as “colored footballers.” He also made controversial remarks about female and gay players at a parliamentary committee meeting.
The European Central Bank’s annual forum starts. The two-day event, usually held in a Portuguese hillside resort but switched to online this year, will focus on topics including inflation, climate change, and the impact of the Covid-19 on European and global economies.
The US presidential transition is sort of moving along. Donald Trump groundlessly maintains that he is the winner of a rigged election, and while most GOP politicians still back him, some are hinting at their thinning patience. Most world leaders such as Boris Johnson, who chatted about Brexit and the climate on a call with president-elect Joe Biden, appear to have moved on.
Beijing is effectively in control of Hong Kong’s legislature… China’s top legislative body issued a decision allowing the Hong Kong government to bar anyone it deems a national security threat from serving in the city’s legislature. Minutes after the decision, the government disqualified four opposition lawmakers.
… and cast a shadow on China’s biggest shopping festival. A week after nixing the dual IPO of its affiliate Ant, Beijing sent another pointed signal to Alibaba—it proposed anti–monopoly rules for internet companies on the eve of the e-commerce giant’s annual Single’s Day extravaganza. Meanwhile, TikTok has challenged Trump’s order for its parent ByteDance to sell it to a US firm by Nov. 12.
The rebirth of cool
Pop quiz, hot shot. Those shoes you think are cool—what kind of cool are they?
🕶 Niche cool: Does a small group of people believe that those shoes are cool because the masses haven’t discovered them yet? Mukesh Ambani’s Ajio is trying to tap into the sneaker collector niche, and Indian sneakerheads are skeptical.
🛒 Mass cool: Are those shoes coveted by mainstream feet? Though it has firmly niche-cool roots, Supreme, which was just acquired by VF Corp—owner of brands such as Vans, The North Face, Timberland, and Dickies—has been skating towards mass cool status for years.
Charting income growth’s effect on US voting
US economic fortunes have been influencing presidential outcomes since the times of George Washington. Over the past two and a half centuries, Americans have tended to vote out incumbents when the economy sours, and rewarded them with another term when it’s thriving, a phenomenon that political scientists call “retrospective economic voting.”
The state of the economy is not the only factor that matters, of course. As the US becomes more politically polarized, there is some evidence that partisanship is playing a bigger role in elections, and retrospective voting a smaller one. Still, looking at the 2020 election through the lens of the economy offers a useful starting point for gauging the result. Ana Campoy breaks it down.
Climate tech funding, by the numbers
In 2019, nearly six cents of every venture dollar invested went into climate tech, according to PwC. The category is broad, and just getting broader, including everything from data center energy efficiency algorithms to electric airplanes.
$10-16 billion: Amount that 500 climate tech companies collected from investors last year, most of it in the US, China, and Europe
20: Countries that have net-zero targets on the books (compared to zero in 2006)
120: Countries working on adopting some form of carbon neutrality
300: Major global companies committed to carbon neutrality by 2050
200: Institutional investors managing $29 trillion in assets who have asked executives at top US greenhouse gas emitters to disclose their plans to limit global warming
Is climate tech booming, or on its way to another bust? Read more in our guide to climate tech’s second shot.
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Surprising discoveries
New Zealand’s bird of the year competition sees voter fraud. The organizer said it is unclear who cast the over 1,500 fraudulent votes for the little-spotted Kiwi.
Boris Johnson got lazy about his congratulations to Joe Biden. The message he tweeted to the US president-elect was overwritten on an image about a Donald Trump victory.
Japan’s CD-loyal music fans are discovering streaming. The services could grow to account for around 20% of sales this year.
A student found a new species of prehistoric flying reptile in a museum drawer. The specimen was gathering dust after being mislabeled as a shark fin skeleton.
Without tourists, Japan’s deer have been forced to forage. A lack of rice cracker handouts has led Nara Park deer to graze on tree nuts—and nearby shop owners’ potted flowers.
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