MBW - 3/23/2022
Good morning friends. I hope you are having a good day. Here’s your daily digest to top that up.
News Briefing
•Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s organization published a video claiming to have uncovered the mysterious owner of the 13th-largest yacht in the world, worth some $700 million: Vladimir Putin, or someone connected to him. For someone who makes $140k a year seems like a whole lot of yacht. The yacht, named the Scheherazade is currently in the Italian port of Marina di Carrara on Italy's west coast in Tuscany. You can watch the video here (turn on the subtitles).
•A TikToker arrested after posting clip of Ukrainian military vehicles parked near a mall that Russia later blew up. (Source: Business Insider)
•A Capitol riot suspect is granted refugee status in Belarus after fleeing the US. Congrats. You played yourself. (Source:CNN)
•Here’s a Ukrainian soldier talking about the irony of life. Sick burn.
•A Russian soldier identified only by the nickname Misha brought his tank to the Ukrainian military intelligence. They regularly identify phones of Russian soldiers and text them conditions for surrender. He called them back and offered surrender in exchange of money and safety. They determined a safe place to meet and used a drone to make sure that it was not an ambush. He said that the rest of his crew deserted the unit and the moral of the Russian military was low. (Source: Victor Andrusiv)
•Renault resumes car production in Moscow. Renault has owned a controlling two-thirds stake in the Russian carmaker Avtovaz since late 2016. That means it has larger operations in the country than most other European rivals, with 40,000 local employees, posing a huge challenge as the US, UK and EU governments try to isolate Russia economically. More on this here.
•In other news, porn star Stormy Daniels must pay former President Trump nearly $300,000 in attorneys’ fees, a federal appeals court said in aruling upholding a judge’s order in her failed defamation lawsuit. More on this here.
•East Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, is experiencing an incredible heatwave unlike any ever observed. The weather station in Concordia over the Antarctic plateau, reported temperatures of almost 50°C (90°F) above average.
More on this here.
•Netflix announced that it would crack down on password sharing in order to boost paid subscriptions whose growth has been declining lately. Seems like this did not age well:
Also this:
CoComelon
If you have little kids you would definitely know about the CoComelon YouTube channel. It contains computer-generated videos of swollen-headed infants smiling along to nursery rhymes which have now been viewed more than 120 billion times. This channel has become the envy of Disney, Warner Bros and Netflix.
The shows are all bright, benign and for children of a particular age, highly digestible. They are all owned and operated by a London-based company called Moonbug, founded in 2018 by a pair of entertainment execs named Rene Rechtman and John Robson. In a short period of time, Rechtman and Robson had built their pre-school entertainment powerhouse. End of 2021, Moonbug was acquired by a private equity-backed company for $3 billion.
Neither of us are creative geniuses’ admits Robson. Instead the have built Moonbug by adopting a clinical, calculated approach to acquiring content. Covid-19 also played a role in helping their business as lockdowns considerably increased watch-time. More on this here.
Peak Friendship Age
Soon after your mid-20s, your social circle shrinks, according to a recent study by scientists from the University of Oxford. The average 25-year-old woman contacts about 17.5 people per month, while a man contacts 19 people, and no, Facebook friends weren’t taken into consideration.
The theory is that around this age, people begin to decide who is most important - and valuable - in their life and make a greater effort to hold on to those friends. This applies to both partners and friends, and it stems largely from people wanting to settle down and raise a family.
By the age of 39, the average man was contacting 12 people, while women were calling 15 people each month. Initial numbers of contacts during younger years are higher for men, but by these later years, they soon drop contacts faster than women, and their totals become lower. (Source: CNN)
What Happened to the Ozone Hole?
I grew up in the 90s and back then the end of the world would come from the ozone hole. So what happened to it? A bit of background first:
In 1985 Jonathan Shanklin and his colleagues Joe Farman and Brian Gardiner published a paper suggesting a link to a human-made compound called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in aerosols and cooling devices and the droppings of ozone levels which began in the late 1970s. Their discovery, the thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica, came to be known as the ozone hole. Ozone is mostly found in the stratosphere, a layer of the atmosphere between six and 30 miles (10-50 km) above the Earth's surface. This ozone layer forms an invisible protective shield over the planet, absorbing damaging UV radiation from the sun. Without it, life on Earth would not be possible.
The use of CFCs continued unabated and by the 1970s they were ubiquitous worldwide, used as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners, in aerosol spray cans and as industrial cleaning agents.
In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was adopted to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the chemicals which deplete it. During the 1990s and early-2000s, the production and consumption of CFCs was brought to a halt. By 2009, 98% of the chemicals agreed to in the treaty had been phased out.
Since its adoption, the Montreal Protocol has been signed by every country on Earth – to date the only treaty to be universally ratified. It's widely considered a triumph of international environmental cooperation.
Today, the ozone hole still exists, forming every year over Antarctica in the spring. It closes up again over the summer as stratospheric air from lower latitudes is mixed in, patching it up until the following spring when the cycle begins again. But there’s evidence it’s starting to disappear – and recover more or less as expected, says Solomon. Based on scientific assessments, the ozone layer is expected to return to pre-1980 levels around the middle of the century. Healing is slow because of the long lifespan of ozone-depleting molecules. Some persist in the atmosphere for 50 to 150 years before decaying. (Source: BBC)
Pics, vids & memes
If you don’t know who Tyrone Biggums is, you need to watch this.
Yeah, never sounds good. Talk to you then.
It was about time for some Dilbert cringe in this space.
Contemplating the true nature of reality.
This was done by a sculptor named Gabi Rizea.
Yep, that explains a lot of things.
The weekly Key&Peele.
That was it for today folks. Enjoy the rest of your day. See you tomorrow, peace.