One hundred IBM (NYSE: IBM) employees from 33 countries – including six from Australia and New Zealand – have been selected to participate in the company's new Corporate Service Corps program. The program is part of the Global Citizen's Portfolio initiative announced by CEO Sam Palmisano to develop leadership skills, while addressing socio-economic challenges in emerging markets.

IBM Research in Australia has announced plans to undertake research with Melanoma Institute Australia to help further advance the identification of melanoma using cognitive technology. This planned research builds on IBM’s existing research agreement with Molemap, which uses advanced visual analytics to analyse more than 40,000 data sets including images and text. IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma1. The Australian research aims to help reduce unnecessary biopsies and help clinicians more accurately understand skin cancer, which could help to improve patient care.

IBM Q Network to explore practical applications of quantum computing for business and science with University of Melbourne, JPMorgan Chase, Daimler AG, Samsung, JSR Corporation, Barclays, Hitachi Metals, Honda, Nagase, Keio University, Oak Ridge National Lab, and Oxford University.

The Australian Federal Government today announced that it has awarded IBM (NYSE: IBM) a new AU$1B, five-year Whole of Government agreement to be a major technology partner with the Australian government.

ASL to benefit from IBM Cloud and IBM PureApplication to deliver for secure real time payments for NPP Australia

New advertising streams for global news organisations uncovered by AI

EnergyAustralia, the country’s largest electricity distribution network, today announced an agreement with IBM for the implementation of an energy network monitoring and control solution.

Country Energy, manager of Australia's largest power network, today announced a global collaboration with IBM (NYSE: IBM) aimed at developing and deploying an Intelligent Network in Australia.

Southern Cross Computer Systems Pty Ltd has been named winner of the award for “Innovation in Green IT Data Center Solution” in the annual IBM Beacon Awards competition, honoring IBM Business Partners for their ingenuity, innovation, customer satisfaction and outstanding achievements in providing business solutions.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced it has selected Synnex, one of Australia’s largest IT distribution companies, as a new IBM System and Technology Group (STG) distributor. The strategic agreement enables IBM to capture a larger share of the lucrative small and medium business IT marketplace with its IBM Express volume hardware products.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is adopting IBM social software to support the way thousands of employees connect and interact.

Study Reveals Australian Office Workers Stressed by Irrelevant Email Overload

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Digital Alchemy, a leading Australian database marketing service provider, has extended its commitment to IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) software to more quickly and easily enable cross-channel interactive campaigns for its clients.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cúram Software announced today the successful implementation of a number of software solutions for WorkCoverSA to support their business. WorkCover selected IBM Global Business Services to implement the Cúram for Workers' Compensation Solution, a comprehensive and proven claims management solution that manages and automates the complete claim lifecycle from injury to outcome, as part of a comprehensive modernisation of their IT systems.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the successful implementation of a first of its kind smart grid data management platform, designed and built with Ausgrid to give the utility more data from part of its electricity distribution grid.

Watching the movie Joker, I felt repeatedly that I was watching a film that Greg Heisler could have lit. The use of color was unique, sophisticated and fearless — almost a character unto itself.

In this outstanding 15-minute short produced by Vanity Fair, Joker cinematographer Lawrence Sher dissects his own use of light and color in the movie. Read more »

NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect that X-Peditions' 2020 season has filled.

X-Peditions is a collaborative project between Strobist.com and Washington DC-based Focus on the Story. You can learn more about our program in general, and/or get early notification for next year's program, at X-Peditions.com.

Woodside Energy and IBM will work together to re-imagine the way work is done using next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to help Woodside realise its vision of an “intelligent plant”.

2019.10.9青柳にとっては結構おおきな出来事ドラえもんが金曜日の夜から土曜日の夕方になった。時代の流れオープンニングもまた変わってた、なんかまぁそうか、とりあえず何事も新続きをみる

『著作権保護のため、記事の一部のみ表示されております。』

ehoradote:

Conte de printemps (1990) Éric Rohmer

interiores

Photo by 蜷川実花

Just a short note that the memorial article “Analysis and applications: The mathematical work of Elias Stein” has just been published in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.  This article was a collective effort led by Charlie Fefferman, Alex Ionescu, Steve Wainger and myself to describe the various mathematical contributions of Elias Stein, who […]

Next quarter, starting March 30, I will be teaching “Math 247B: Classical Fourier Analysis” here at UCLA.  (The course should more accurately be named “Modern real-variable harmonic analysis”, but we have not gotten around to implementing such a name change.) This class (a continuation of Math 247A from previous quarter, taught by my colleague, Monica […]

At the most recent MSRI board of trustees meeting on Mar 7 (conducted online, naturally), Nicolas Jewell (a Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics at Berkeley, also affiliated with the Berkeley School of Public Health and the London School of Health and Tropical Disease), gave a presentation on the current coronavirus epidemic entitled “2019-2020 Novel Coronavirus […]

My student, Jaume de Dios, has set up a web site to collect upcoming mathematics seminars from any institution that are open online.  (For instance, it has a talk that I will be giving in an hour.)   There is a form for adding further talks to the site; please feel free to contribute (or make […]

Robyn Meta Herrington, active member of both SFWA and SF Canada, passed away fifteen years ago today, on Monday morning, May 3, 2004, in Calgary, Alberta, after a courageous multi-year battle with cancer. Robyn’s short fiction appeared in such places as On Spec, Talebones, Adventures of Sword and Sorcery, Parsec, and in Mike Resnick‘s DAW […]

I desire to get back in the habit of posting regularly here, so I will post every day in September and see if that helps. This blog (if you count its beginning on my 35th birthday, just after 9/11, as a LiveJournal) is the oldest internet "belonging" I have, except for my email address. I don't want to lose it through neglect.

Today, I will report that in August, I paid off 1.20% of our consumer debt, and I expect that to snowball as we pay off the higher-interest stuff. I will report in once a month.

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Questions and answers, the former from adrian_turtle, who is awesome, and at least one of the latter stolen from hobbitbabe, who is also awesome.

( Read more... )

The actor behind Luke Skywalker takes StarWars.com on a journey through filming the Star Wars sequel in time for the 40th anniversary of its release.

Emmy Nominee Leslye Headland to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for new untitled Star Wars series for Disney+.

These lines are impressive. Most impressive.

T he kind folks at Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) recently sent me a preview copy of Old West Empresario, which will debut at GenCon 2019 today. We already have about ten TMG games in our collection that we thoroughly enjoy (with Crusaders and Gentes being the most recent additions) and so my husband Chris and I were both feeling pretty good about the chances of this new release being a good fit for us as well.

Old West Empresario  picks up its narrative where its prequel, Pioneer Days (also from TMG) left off. Players take on the role of Empresarios, settling the old west. They are charged with building new towns so prosperous and populated that one will be chosen as the state capital, winning the game for its Empresario.

As with Pioneer Days, the  artwork from Sergi Marcet reinforces the Western theme and uses bright, appealing colors. I appreciated the racial diversity depicted in the illustrations.

Components include double sided building cards, currency tokens, victory point (i.e. population) tokens, and die number tiles (all constructed from heavy cardboard); as well as a set of eight brown dice, a wooden first player token, thin cards for the wanted and character cards, a scoring pad, and the rulebook.  Most of the components should last a long time under regular use but the character cards and wanted cards should possibly be sleeved to prevent bending or tearing.

The gameplay here is a bit reminiscent of Suburbia in that victory points (VP) are partially earned based on the placement of constructed buildings in a player’s town relative to other constructed buildings in the town. For example, the Mine scores 2 VP at the end of the game if adjacent to at least 1 Inn and 1 VP per adjacent Distillery. In addition to victory points earned based on the adjacency rules, a number of constructed civic buildings award end game points to the owning player based on meeting certain qualifications such as owning x amount of cash, y amount of victory tokens, or z amount of native settlement buildings. There are also four other ways to earn victory points in Old West Empresario :

• owning the largest contiguous block of native settlement buildings
• construction of buildings tied to the railroad, stock, or oil industries
• accumulation of wanted cards (awarded for being the first or second player to accomplish the objective listed on the card)
• accumulation of wealth (1VP for every 3 coins)

So how do we construct buildings in our towns and what else can they do for us besides award end game VP? Well, each round, the starting player rolls the set of dice (2 for each player + 1 extra) and then places each die on top of the corresponding die number tile. Each die number tile has two buildings positioned underneath it selected from the pool of unconstructed buildings and native settlements.  Unconstructed buildings can be activated later in the game once added and constructed in a player’s town.  Native settlements do not require construction and have a one time activation effect when added to a player’s town.

Taking turns beginning with the start player, each player selects a die from a die number tile and then either (1) collects one of the buildings underneath the die number tile to add to their town (2) activates all the buildings in their town that have the same number on their die icon as the die selected, or (3) discards one of the buildings underneath the die number tile to the game discard pile and collects $3.

Each player begins the game with only one constructed building in their town – the town hall – which has, as one of its activation effects, the ability to construct another building in the town for the resource cost of $1. In addition to the town hall, each player selects a native settlement or unconstructed building to add to their town at the start of the game. Note that the town hall can be activated by any die number. This means that on any player’s first turn, they are able to activate their town hall to construct an unconstructed building already in their town. If the first building they construct is the Carpenter building, they now have two constructed buildings capable of constructing new buildings when activated.

Aside from construction as an activation effect, the accumulation of VP tokens, cash, or additional building tiles are also possible, depending on the specific building under activation. One building (the Church) allows a player to activate another building from their town that otherwise would not be activated that turn for a small fee. And the Undertaker building forces opponents to discard cash (Aha! Take that!).

The game ends and victory points are tallied after the round in which one or more players host at least 15 buildings in their town, or the building supply deck or VP token supply runs out.

In my first game of Old West Empresario, I played against my husband. His strategy was to turn the game into some kind of massive engine builder. He worked hard to construct buildings in his town that ALL had the same activation number. I took the opposite approach and tried to cover all the dice outcomes so that I knew I always had at least one building other than my Town Hall to activate if desired. I focused on earning VP tokens through building activation effects and the wanted cards while he focused on earning VP through adjacency rules. I beat him by one point.

In another game with friends, I took the same approach and won again even though my friends also tried to focus on these items. Rinse repeat across a few more games. But when I played against my husband a second time and he focused less this time on adjacency rules and more on building activation effects to collect VP tokens, he was able to beat me. This is where his ploy to have several buildings with the same activation number gave him the edge – I might activate one building on a turn that gave VP tokens as an activation effect while he activated four on a turn that did so. I’ll need to match his strategy in grouping activation numbers if I am going to have a chance to beat him.

I have now played the game several times since receiving it, across all players counts. A few summary takeaways from these plays of Old West Empresario:

1. The game is easy to learn but it takes awhile for players to memorize the activation effects of each building. It can be helpful to photocopy the back cover of the rulebook that documents this information and give one sheet to each player for reference.

2. Game time consistently hovers around an hour, regardless of player count or number of previous plays under the players’ belts.

3. There are multiple paths to victory and winning strategies to explore due to a myriad of ways to earn victory points.

4. Huge spreads across the final player scores are unlikely. They never occurred in our games. It’s very much a neck and neck competition till the end and no one is certain of the winner until the final scores are tallied.

5. The iconography can be confusing for new players. The designer overlays a circle with a a slash through it on top of a picture of a resource to indicate the cost of an action. However, almost every new player interpreted the image at first glance to mean none of the resource was required to perform the action (perhaps thinking normally one  or more units of the resource is required by default).

Overall, Old West Empresario  is an engaging, lightweight to medium strategy game that can work with many different play groups. It’s a good game for drawing non-gamer friends into tabletop gaming and to give hardcore gamers a more relaxing hour of gameplay. I am going to keep the game and I’m thinking of picking up Pioneer Days  to set up a back to back gaming event where we begin with PD and move onto OWE, perhaps with a viewing of a film like Rio Bravo wedged in the middle. The $60 retail price point is a bit steep but strategy gaming market pricing continues to trend upward with the rising demand for new games so it would be a mischaracterization to imply TMG isn’t pricing games competitively; they are on par with other large publishers. 

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Publisher: Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG)
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 60 minutes
Game type: tile placement, tableau building

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me

Deep Water Games provided me a review copy of Mystery of The Temples , an abstract area control game designed by Wei-Min Ling. It's one of three games in my collection from the Deep Water Games catalog that were originally published by EmperorS4 and feature artwork by Maisherly Chan (Shadows in Kyoto and Hanamikoji are the other two).

In Mystery of the Temples, players take on the role of adventurers on a quest to collect ancient runes protected by dark curses.  In order to break the curses, crystals must be collected and aligned. During game setup, five temple cards are arranged face up in a circle and two wilderness cards are placed in between each pair of temple cards (the picture below shows an alternative arrangement for a 2-player game). A stack of rune cards (4 cards per stack; these cards provide valuable crystal bonuses) are placed face down above each temple card and the top card in each stack is flipped face up. Temple objective cards are laid out; these cards provide additional victory points for breaking temple curses. Each player is given a grid to collect crystals on.

During the game, each player moves their curse breaker meeple clockwise across the temples and wilderness, obeying the detailed rules provided in the rule book. Ending a turn on a wildness card allows a player to collect crystals to carefully arrange on their grid.

Ending a turn on a temple card allows a player to turn in crystals (which must be connected on their grid sheet in the precise order specified on the temple card) to break a curse and earn victory points. There are multiple strategic decisions to be made during a turn as each wilderness card offers up different crystal gathering opportunities and each temple card provides victory points ranging from 3 to 8, depending on how many crystals a player is able to pattern match and discard. Each of the various crystal combinations on the temple cards can only be claimed once so a player must decide whether to amass the minimum amount of crystals to quickly fill in the lower victory point slots before their opponents can, or work at a slower pace, giving themselves time to collect and arrange longer chains of crystals on their grid sheets that will be worth more victory points.

The game ends at the conclusion of the first round in which a player has broken their fifth curse. Victory points are then tallied and the player with the highest victory point total wins the game. Once players are comfortable with the standard rules of play, they can experiment with the advanced rules, which provide for more complexity and variability in play and scoring. As with most area control games, scaling player counts can be an issue. The designer has addressed this in Mystery of the Temples by providing a 2-player variant that uses extra player markers (to block off temple curse claim spots), less wilderness cards, and an extra player meeple (to occupy random temple and wildness card spaces and block movement to those spaces; the meeple moves after each player’s turn). We found these adjustments allowed for the 2-player game to be just as compelling as with higher player counts.

Replayability is high due to the abstract nature of the game play in Mystery of the Temples. There are no narrative cards to tire of and the unique move combinations that can be sequenced to earn victory points are numerous as the temple and wilderness card layout vary each game. There is a moderate amount of analysis paralysis but it is manageable. Game play lasts around 45 minutes on average.

Game components include beautifully illustrated plastic coated cards (everything Maisherly Chan creates is visually appealing and the card and box cover art here are no exception), cardboard tokens, wooden player markers and meeples, and acrylic crystals. Everything should hold up well under regular use. The crystals are sparkly and fun; I absolutely love them.

While the other Deep Water Games titles didn’t work for me (too frustrating in the depth of analysis required), this one is a keeper. It’s the only one of the three games that hits the conceptual sweet spot for me of challenging but still fun. There is a nice flow to the game; the rhythm of moving my meeple each turn and collecting crystals is pleasant.  Mystery of the Temples provides plenty of intellectual challenge in a small box (this game is not easy by any means) with beautiful artwork and an affordable price point.

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Publisher: Deep Water Games
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes per game
Game type: area control, abstract

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I love a good area control game. I'm crazy about Islebound, Scythe, Spirit Island, Blood Rage, Forbidden Stars, Vindication, Fate of the Elder Gods, and Twlight Imperium IV (my FAVORITE game outside of Brass Birmingham).  So I had high hopes for Kemet. It’s an older game (released in 2012), designed by Jacques Bariot and Guillaume Montiage and it’s been on my wishlist since I started playing board games at a neighborhood gaming store about a year after its release. My best friend and I would be at the store playing whatever new game we’d bought that month, and I’d admire the Kemet cover art from where I sat. It just looks absolutely thrilling.

Because we were heavily into the cult of the new at that time, we never prioritized adding an older game like Kemet to our collection. This was finally rectified when Matagot sent me a review copy.  I was so excited to open the box, especially when I discovered the artwork on the inside was just as well illustrated as the box cover I’d admired all those years before.

In Kemet, players are Egyptian Gods, fighting against each other in dynamic power plays using their troops and temples. The first player to earn eight victory points is declared the winning God.  Players start the game with three pyramids dedicated to them and must decide to allocate three points  (called “prayer points”; theming is really well implemented) - among the pyramids – either three level 1 pyramids, or one level 2, one level 1, and one level 0 pyramid. Note that the designer has cleverly chosen to use gigantic D4 dice for the pyramids.  Level 1+ pyramids are placed onto the main board and grant the controlling God additional powers shown on corresponding tiles, which they may purchase using prayer points. Some of these tiles automatically provide victory points for the owner while others aid in battle or give other benefits. The cost to raise pyramid levels is also paid in prayer points, and victory points can be earned by raising a pyramid level up to level 4. Prayer points are handed out automatically during the beginning of each round (called the Night phase), so there is always an opportunity to prioritize increasing pyramid levels and buying new tiles. Players are given an action board to track prayer point balance and actions across the rounds. During the second half of each round (Day phase), players take 5 turns choosing  and executing an action (gain more prayer points, raise a pyramid, buy a power tile, recruit units onto the main board for battle, and move/attack). Moving and attacking opponents allows a God to win battles and earn more victory points. Recruiting units is important to overpower the other Gods in battle because unit count in an attack is one of the base factors in determining the victor and earning those coveted victory points. Moving and successfully attacking also bring victory points from  controlling the areas where various temples are situated on the main board.

So that’s the gameplay- a restorative Night phase followed by an active Day phase, rinse and repeat until one of the Gods has 8 victory points. It sounds kind of dull when laid bare yet it’s anything but that during gameplay thanks to a plethora of choices available to players during the game. The decision tree of choices and outcomes for just one game is quite complex. Will you rush to build up your red or blue pyramid and power tiles first to improve your battle outcomes? Or take a chance that you won’t be attacked immediately and build up your white pyramid and power tiles to maximize prayer point accumulation (which in turn let you build up the other pyramid and powers faster)?  Another exciting part of the game are the battles and anticipation of them.  You sit there, watching your opponents amass units and powers on their turns and wonder when they’re going to come for you, while you are silently calculating when and where it will be best for you to strike in battle yourself. And I haven’t even told you about the creatures yet.

The creatures might be the best part of the game for many players. There are several power tiles tied to creatures – when you procure the power tile, you control the associated creature. It’s added to one of your group of units (a troop) on the main board and has special powers. For example, the Phoenix and any troops with it can ignore walls, walking right through them. Bonus: if you own Cyclades (another board game from Matagot) and purchase the C3K Creatures Crossover (also from Matagot), you can use the creatures from Cyclades in Kemet.

It took me a few weeks to schedule our first game. There’s a specific subset of our gaming friends that enjoy aggressive conflict and area control games and being busy professionals it can be hard for them to carve out time to play.  We gave everyone the homework assignment to read up on the game and its rules before we got together for the first game. That’s my strong recommendation for anyone playing Kemet for the first time, as it’s important to become familiar with all the different power tiles and creatures  in order to do well at the game. Fortunately, the rulebook is well written, so everything within is fairly easy to understand.

The first time we played, we all agreed that the game was brilliantly fun with lots of tension, especially toward the game’s end. I struggled with prioritizing which pyramids to level up but it was enjoyable to experiment with the different creatures and their effect on battle.  Our scores were all very close throughout the game, and it was anyone’s guess who the winner was going to be. We played with 4 players that first time and it took us 5 hours (all our games take forever because we have 2 players with severe analysis paralysis; plus there was not a lot of attacking in the first few rounds and attacking is the quickest route to earning victory points).  Subsequent games went faster as we got more familiar with the game, but we never managed to get under 2 hours in any of them.

The game plays well at all player counts because the designers have taken the time to customize the board, offering a 2 sided board with one side to be used for 2/4 player games, and the other side for 3/5 player games. This is really important in an area control game, which can otherwise suffer from too large a playing field under lower player counts.

Kemet  is a game I’m keeping in my collection and will be in the steady rotation of area control games that come to the table. The theming of the game and uniqueness of the creatures make Kemet distinct enough from other games that feature warring factions and special creatures (like Blood Rage or Cyclades) to not feel duplicative. The game is subject to a ton of analysis paralysis but I’m ok with that. I’m interested in exploring the different strategy paths available and whether a consistent pattern of decisions leads to victory in most games or whether every game’s decisions have to be carefully tailored to the choices opponents are making.

I hope you’ll pick up Kemet (and the C3K Creatures Crossover if you own Cyclades already) and give it a try with your game group and let me know what you think.

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Matagot Games
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): 2 hrs+
Game type: are control, card drafting, action points
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Hello Everyone! I just want to quickly let you all know about a couple of improvements we've made to the Starfighter site. Starting last week, every comic page of Starfighter has had a link below it to its own comment section. We're using the Disqus comment system, which I imagine many of you are already familiar with. It's been working well so far and we hope you all like it! Even though it's only been up for short while, your response has been wonderful. Hamlet and I have both really enjoyed getting to hear all of your thoughts on the comic so far!

One other small change - you'll notice a new latest page link in the upper right hand corner of every page on the Starfigheter website. I wanted to make it easier for all of you Starfighter veterans to reach the new page each week. Hopefully you'll all find this more convenient!

Thank you all so much again for your enthusiasm in the new comments! Oh! And also, Hamlet's just finished the latest page. I'd say now would be a good time to give that new link a try! -Thisbe

Téměř 40 procent Čechů pocítilo dopad pandemie na své příjmy. Třetina jich má finanční rezervu na čtyři a více měsíců, 42 procent maximálně na měsíc. O zaměstnání v době krize přišlo sedm procent dotazovaných. Většina se ale jeho ztráty nebojí. Vyplývá to z dubnového průzkumu NMS Market Research pro Raiffeisenbank.

Dopravní podniky i soukromí dopravci obnovují běžné jízdní řády. Přestože stále hromadnou dopravu využívá zlomek lidí než před zahájením karanténních opaření, poklesy o 80 nebo 90 procent proti běžnému stavu už jsou minulostí.

U dvou zaměstnanců mladoboleslavské automobilky Škoda Auto byla zjištěna nákaza covid-19. Podle zjištění Práva to však nebude mít vliv na nedávno obnovený provoz závodu.

Nezaměstnanost se šíří světem podobně jako virus. Nejhorší je situace v USA. Tamní centrální banka čeká až třetinovou nezaměstnanost. Jednou z nejvíce postižených zemí v Evropě bude Španělsko, kde se může ocitnout bez práce více než pětina lidí.

Mezinárodní ratingová agentura Fitch Ratings snížila hodnocení úvěrové spolehlivosti Slovenska o jeden stupeň na úroveň A se stabilním výhledem. Důvodem jsou hlavně dopady koronaviru na slovenskou ekonomiku. Jde o první změnu ratingu země v době pandemie.

Česká národní banka čeká propad české ekonomiky o 8 procent. Na předkrizovou úroveň se nedostane ani v příštím roce. Restart bude záviset i na tom, jak rychle lidé začnou utrácet. Napovědí příští měsíce, kdy se víc lidí bude hlásit na úřady práce.

Istrie patří k nejoblíbenějším částem Chorvatska. Jako skoro všude na světě se tam hoteliérský a restaurační byznys letos v březnu úplně zastavil, což si ještě nedávno nikdo nedokázal představit. Teď se ale blíží oživení. „Ani přinejmenším ale neočekáváme, že zopakujeme výsledky loňského roku,“ říká v rozhovoru šéf turistického sdružení celé oblasti Denis Ivošević.

Studio Universal na znovuotevření kin nečeká. Premiéru animovaného hitu Trollové: Světové turné pustilo na placených digitálních kanálech. Strategie se vyplatila a hollywoodský gigant zvažuje, že by kinům v budoucnu odepřel jejich exkluzivní právo promítat filmy měsíce před uvedením na jiných platformách.

CEOs of the major Wall Street banks have been summoned to the White House to discuss the coronavirus...

The coronavirus outbreak has officially been labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization, potentially grinding the global economy to a halt. Yet every step of the way, the Trump administration’s response has been to deny, blame, obfuscate, and generally cover up. 

Trump and his enablers are focused only on mitigating the economic consequences of the outbreak, especially before the election – mulling proposals like corporate tax cuts and bailouts for airlines and the hotel industry, but resisting the needs of average Americans and our broken healthcare system. 

The outbreak has also revealed the utter weakness of our social safety nets: workers may be forced to choose between a missed paycheck and risking their health because too many employers have no paid sick leave, schools are weighing whether or not to shut down because hundreds of thousands of poor children rely on them for hot meals, and our cruel for-profit healthcare system is preventing people from getting tested for the virus for fear of a hefty bill.

And, remember, 80 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Coupled with Trump’s incompetence and narcissism, it’s a recipe for total disaster.

Meanwhile, the Democratic electorate is in the midst of a primary to unseat this sociopath. After Tuesday, Biden has kept his delegate lead with wins in Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. And while the race isn’t over yet, it’s wise to start making contingency plans.

Biden’s biggest weakness is his failure to attract progressives and young voters. In a CNN exit poll for Michigan, Bernie won a whopping 82 percent of voters age 18-29. Without these voters, if Biden is the nominee, Democrats will not be able to get the votes needed to defeat Trump.

So what are Biden’s options for getting out the vote of this crucial portion of the Party? He must select a true progressive for Vice President, like Elizabeth Warren or even Bernie Sanders, who can push bold progressive ideas like a wealth tax, Medicare for All, tuition-free college, cancelling student debt, and a Green New Deal.

These progressive policies are also winners with the electorate – a majority of voters even in Mississippi and other southern states supported replacing the current healthcare system with a single-payer system, and polling continues to reflect this appetite for transformative change. Even if Bernie isn’t getting the support he counted on, his ideas are.

And don’t count Bernie out just yet. A debate is coming up this weekend that could boost his campaign enough to help him secure wins in later key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But if he fails to get traction, he needs to do whatever he can to help reunite the party, and most importantly, keep working to shift the party in a progressive direction. Behind the scenes he needs to negotiate with Biden a pathway to gain progressive support.

Meanwhile, Biden needs to take up the issues of concern to young people, who are the future of the party and who Democrats can’t win without. This might seem like a pipe dream, but Biden has no choice. This is not 2016. The nation cannot afford another 4 years of Trump. If you’re angry – and rightfully so – use that anger to keep pushing the movement.

Dr. Anthony S Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and just...

Societies gripped by cataclysmic wars, depressions, or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to...

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The system is rigged. But we can fix it.

Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it – as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism – socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”

He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion – roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 – a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders – not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business – to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders – ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value – such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt – and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.