Local elections in Taiwan went poorly for the ruling party on Saturday (Nov. 24). But in China, Beijing has been given much to celebrate. The independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost seven of the 13 cities and counties it currently holds to the China-friendly opposition Kuomintang (KMT). As a sign of how badly things went for the DPP, it lost Kaohsiung, in the south, despite holding it for decades. It also ceded Taichung, Taiwan’s second most populous city. The stinging results prompted Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen to resign as DPP chair Saturday. China chalked up another win with voters’ rejection of a proposal regarding the 2020 Olympics. The measure proposed using the name “Taiwan” when applying to compete in the contest, rather than “Chinese Taipei.” China prefers the latter name because it considers Taiwan a renegade province, despite decades of democratic self-rule. The elections are considered a status check for Tsai, who came to power two years ago at the expense of the KMT. Since assuming office she’s walked a fine line on relations with China, emphasizing Taiwan’s sovereignty while avoiding calls from within her party to move toward declaring formal separation from the mainland. During her term, China has stepped up its military intimidation and undertaken various measures to undermine Taiwan’s economy and diplomatic standing. For example, it has restricted the flow of mainland tourists, and persuaded former diplomatic allies of Taiwan to cut off ties. Such pressure has hurt business confidence in Taiwan. The KMT stresses economic ties with the mainland and eschews talk of going it alone. Beijing, not surprisingly, prefers it over the DPP. “Certainly, I think the Chinese government would like to see the KMT come on strong in this election as a pointer to the presidential and legislative elections in 2020,” Michael Boyden, managing director at TASC Taiwan Asia Strategy Consulting, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday. “The trade relationship with China matters a great deal to many people here.”

Scientists suspect they were toothless and as big as elephants—a super-sized cross between a rhino and a turtle. They are Lisowicia bojani, a mammal-like reptile that walked alongside dinosaurs in the Triassic period about 200 million years ago. Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden this week published a study in the journal Science detailing the creature, which has been pieced together from around 1000 fossilized bones discovered at a paleontological dig in Poland. It weighed about 1.5 tons, they believe, and was about 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) long. The discovery of Lisowicia bojani is important because it changes how scientists think about dicynodonts, herbivores who survived the Permian mass extinction that is believed to have killed off more than 96% of marine species and about 70% of terrestrial life. And while they managed to get through that scrape, the dicynodonts were thought to have diminished as the rise of dinosaurs—the kind people popularly recognize today—took place. But in testing the bones found in Poland, paleontologists discovered the creatures likely roamed the planet around 10 million years later than previously thought. The name “dicynodont” means “two dog tooth,” and it refers to the tusks on the animal that resemble canine teeth. These animals also had mouths that resembled beaks, much like a turtle. “The discovery of Lisowicia changes our ideas about the latest history of dicynodonts, said researcher Tomasz Sulej in a statement. “It also raises far more questions about what really make them and dinosaurs so large.” The new study offers an update on an ongoing excavation in the south of Poland that begin in 2006. The researchers went to that site on a tip, and within 15 minutes began to find fossils. In just 11 years, they’ve compiled a detailed picture of Lisowicia bojani.

Over the last two decades, 90 percent of workers in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties—the heart of Silicon Valley—have seen their real wages go down, according to a new study by the University of California, Santa Cruz and the think tank Working Partnership USA. "The median wage for workers in the Silicon Valley region declined by 14 percent," the research showed. This drop in income comes at the same time that productivity in the United States is at record highs, the study found. Worse still, many costs are rising: notably Bay Area housing is increasingly unaffordable. In short, most workers—regardless of whether they work in the tech sector or not—are getting poorer due to venture capital-driven business models that prioritize outlandish returns fueled by low-wage work that captures a given market quickly. "If labor’s share of production in 2016 had been the same as in 2001, every employed Silicon Valley worker would have received, on average, an additional $8,480," the authors wrote. That difference is being pocketed by investors and owners, the research concluded. Chris Benner, one of the study’s authors, and a UCSC professor of environmental studies, told Ars that state and federal governments could mitigate this problem by raising minimum wage laws, restricting outsourcing, strengthening unions, and raising taxes for the wealthy. "What we’re seeing in this data is that the returns to capital are significantly outpacing the returns to labor," he said, noting that some more radical notions, including a universal basic income or something like it, should be considered as well. "We need to be exploring that, otherwise we’re going to continue with the tremendous inequality that we’re experiencing," he concluded, noting that homelessness in Bay Area cities is the worst that it has ever been. Veena Dubal, a labor law professor at the University of California, Hastings, told Ars that a "seismic shift in the tech economy" is needed to make a real difference. "Monopoly-busting is key to this," she emailed. "Right now, a few companies—namely Google and Amazon—have an outsized ability to shape the economy. Their winner-take-all business models have reverberating effects across markets in Silicon Valley. If we want to fight inequality, we have to create more equitable markets. Antitrust laws need to be robustly enforced against these tech giants."

What do Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Indra Nooyi (formerly PepsiCo), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Nitin Nohria (Harvard Business School)—to cite just a few well-known names—have in common? To begin with, they are successful leaders of globally renowned institutions that significantly impact the world we live in. Further, they are leaders who have had a significant component of their early upbringing, living experiences, and education in India. They are “made-in-India managers.” A year back, R Gopalakrishnan and I began discussing this phenomenon. We spoke to many people whom we had studied with during our MBA and engineering days who were in leadership positions in global organisations across the world. “How,” we asked, “if at all, did being ‘made-in-India’ help you get where you are today?” It is not unusual to find successful non-resident Indians being disparaging of India and some of the things that Indians are unable to get right (a criticism that is made sometimes with just cause). However, our experience from these conversations was quite different. The answers surprised us. To the man and woman, everybody we spoke to agreed that the experience of growing up in India had shaped them positively in fundamental ways. It must be said at the outset that while the factors enumerated below play an important role, none of these factors in themselves are unique to Indian managers. Many of the factors are present in different measure in citizens of other developing countries. But we talk in the book (The Made-in-India Manager, Hachette India) of a concept called “emergence.” It is a concept from systems theory that in its essence states that the beauty of a flower cannot be understood by aggregating the beauty of the individual petals or the other parts of the flower—it comes from the way these components come together to create something of greater beauty, which is an emergent property of the flower. Competitive intensity The premier management institutes we are associated with (IIM Calcutta and SPJIMR) regularly host many students from premier business schools in Europe. SPJIMR annually welcomes exchange students from some of the best business schools in Europe. Recently, we conducted an informal focus group with ten such students to understand their perceptions of management education in India. One of the consistent themes that emerged through the interviews was their perception of Indian students as industrious and diligent. “They are much more focused,” they said. “It is very important for Indian students that they do well. We have become more hard-working by being around them. They are very competitive.” The foreign students in question were themselves top students from the best business schools in their respective countries. Person for person, they felt that Indian students were more determined, more focused, and very hard-working. And so they must be, given the intense competition they have to overcome at every step. Statistics bear this out. Currently, 1.2 million students take the entrance examination to the IITs, which have fostered a number of luminaries. As per a newspaper report in the Hindustan Times in 2017, only 11,000 students were admitted to the IITs in 2017, an admit ratio of less than 1 in 100. India’s foremost business school, IIM Ahmedabad, admits one student for every 400 applications. The State Bank of India, India’s premier public sector bank, recently advertised for entry-level probationary officers. It received, on average, 550 applications for every position available (Times of India, May 2018). This demonstrates that intense competition is not only for elite academic institutions. Competitive intensity implies that “made-in-India managers” have survived a high level of competition to get where they are, and this has taught them focus, self-analysis, the importance of practice, and the experience that difficult-looking odds can be overcome. Diversity and inclusion Diversity and inclusion are internalised early by many, and this stands us in good stead later, when adjusting to a different or a variety of cultural environments. Such exposure begins early in life. It is not unusual in school to share lunch with people from different states—a vast variety of cuisine is shared, understood, and appreciated. Similarly, it is not unusual to sing Christian hymns at school and pray to a Hindu god at night. Dealing with ambiguity From the vagaries of the weather, to the unreliability of infrastructure—we learn to deal with a lot of things that are uncertain, and develop the ability to quickly assess situations and help ourselves without waiting for the system to help us. A friend argued that even in an everyday activity like commuting on extremely crowded local trains and getting to work on time, students and working executives develop resilience, the ability to adapt to systems that don’t work, and the intensity to confront and overcome obstacles on a day-to-day basis. Family values The percentage of India-made leaders citing a family member as an influential role model is significantly higher than for their Western counterparts. The formative role of the family in shaping values through demonstration, stressing the value of education, and proving an “always there” support provides a strong value core that builds resilience. Both Indra Nooyi, the former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, and Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, talk about the strong influence that their mothers have had on their upbringing, aspirations, and values. The Indian middle class student has typically grown up in an extremely stable family environment, which has in turn encouraged high aspirations and deep self-confidence. Satya Nadella says of his mother, “My mother cared deeply about my being happy, confident and living in the moment without regret.” Indra Nooyi talks about the things her mother did to help her daughters believe that they could “become whoever they wanted to be.” In a specific instance, Nooyi talks about how her mother would ask both her daughters to make a presentation at the dinner table on what they would do if they were a particular world leader. She would then declare a winner. This kind of role-playing left a lasting impression on Nooyi. Self-confidence is built by achievement in the face of obstacles. Often, a building block is early and unconditional caring in the immediate environment. Achievements in the student phase builds self-confidence in academic domains, and a relative lack of self-awareness in others. The managerial workplace has a new set of rules—and early failures, coupled with a supportive culture, helps managers to understand themselves, understand failure and, through experience, realise that learning from yesterday’s failure builds today’s success. They then develop a deeper confidence. It is a quiet self-belief, a feeling that says, “If I am interested in something and want to make a difference, and I am willing to give it all my effort, there is very little that I cannot prima facie achieve.” It does not need to be stated—it is a quiet determination and the ability to stay steadfast when short-term outcomes do not align with your expectations. It is not a common quality, and we do not think this is inborn. Our managers typically achieve this in a mid-career phase, and those who get there earlier are often early leaders. And so we return to the concept of emergence. The strengths of the made-in-India manager emerge from the coming together of multiple, interlinked features with the ability to “think in English.” We believe that as Indian sportsmen, companies and leaders make their mark on a global stage, tomorrow’s made-in-India manager will grow up in a more inherently confident and assured India and consequently will themselves reflect these qualities. In that sense, it is likely that the soft power represented by “made-in-India managers” will grow further in the years to come.

Food-related content is part of Instagram’s bread and butter in India. And increasingly, such posts are from the “Instagram famous,” or “influencers.” This growing epicurean interest has not gone unnoticed. On Nov. 19, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app held an event in New Delhi to “discuss all things food” with those seeking influencer-fame. The session, billed as a “masterclass,” was just like events Instagram has held earlier for fashion in India and globally. Saket Jha Saurabh, the head of entertainment partnerships at Facebook India, flagged it off with a talk on strategies to grow one’s Instagram presence (in one word: video). He announced the top 10 food hashtags used in India as of that day, which included #kolkatadiaries, #delhigram, #southindianfood, and #paneer. The last one was “the revenge of the vegetarians,” he quipped. Saurabh’s talk was followed by a panel discussion involving several successful Instagram influencers from the food segment. Many of them spoke candidly about strategies to earn money through relationships with brands. “I’ve always tried to make sense out of Instagram in terms of putting engaging content, of course, but also monetising it and making it into a business model for me,” Kunal Kapur, a chef with almost half-a-million followers on Instagram, told the audience. “And it does make a lot of business sense.” Yet, these influencers have also had to adapt to changes in the digital ad market. Recipe for growth Of Instagram’s billion-odd global users, an estimated 71 million are in India, making the country its second-largest base after the US. While it still trails Facebook in terms of digital ad revenue, the app seems to be growing quickly. A Facebook insider told FactorDaily in September that Instagram in India was earning its parent company about $70 million annually, more than double what it was earning a year earlier. Around $7 million of this revenue likely comes from the food segment, Roopak Saluja, founder and CEO of the 120 Media Collective, a communications and content group, told Quartz. This estimate, he said, comes from the fact that food is likely “around 10%” of the revenue, being one of the major segments, alongside beauty, fashion, and travel. That’s also why more and more influencers are finding their space on Instagram. “The influencer community has actually really come up quite amazingly over the past year, year and a half,” Saluja said. “Even people who have a few thousand in terms of fan following get calls from food brands of different sizes to help them market. Because obviously food, like other spaces, is very dependent on word of mouth.” The app’s newer features have made influencers more bankable, allowing them to release content in different formats. Instagram TV (IGTV), a long-form video platform which rolled out this July, has enabled people to upload long recipe walk-throughs. However, all this has also brought additional challenges. New influences With the platform’s user base maturing, Indian Instagram users have become savvier in identifying brand plugs. “Customers today are evolved and pick up out-and-out brand promotions,” Prashant Gopalakrishnan, senior vice-president at digital media firm Dentsu Webchutney, told Quartz. “I think influencers are now becoming more and more subtle about how to integrate brand content.” Archana Doshi, whose healthy-recipe page has over 130,000 followers, said she is careful about what she endorses, ensuring they connect with her personal brand even if they’re not directly food-related. “If I were to do something which is not very relevant, I would have to see the right way to connect with the audience,” she said. Recently, when Doshi endorsed Parachute coconut oil, a popular brand in India, she drew on the fact that “I actually had a genuine problem, where I didn’t have time to take care of my hair, and this hair oil came to the rescue.” Another change affecting the influencer community is Instagram’s crackdown on fake followers and fake likes. On Nov. 19, the company posted a statement saying it is aiming to reduce “inauthentic activity” on the platform. It is trying to curb the use of third-party apps to boost one’s profile. An expert quoted by the Mint newspaper estimates that around 40% of Indian influencers use such apps. Deeba Rajpal, an influencer who has run a page about baking since 2011, says brands are more interested in checking a user’s engagement figures over just the the number of followers, now that it is common knowledge that followers can be bought. Brands, she said, also keep close tabs on an influencer’s analytics. “They want to see what your audience is, where it’s coming from, what the better times of posting are,” she said. With Instagram’s explosive growth, Rajpal has also noticed that those who follow her are increasingly from non-elite backgrounds. So, catering to their interests, she posts a lot of baked goods that do not require an oven. “We have a lot of aspirational people here,” she said. “They want chocolate, but they don’t want to eat chocolate out of a box. So I do stuff which is no-bake as well.” Similarly, the platform used to be once flooded with pictures of fancy preparations and Starbucks lattes, Saluja said. Now there are many more users sharing photos of Indian food, regional recipes, and other content with wider appeal. If Instagram keeps expanding in India, it is only likely to see more growth among non-elite users. ”If you want to get from 70 million to 300 million (users), it’s not going to be the cool urban kids who are going to take you there,” Saluja said.

France is set to make good on president Emmanuel Macron’s promise to return Africa’s stolen art and artifacts. This week, a report will be released that outlines exactly why and how thousands of priceless objects should be returned to Africa. An early look at the report, due on Friday (Nov. 23), calls for a change in French law that would allow restitution through bilateral agreements between France and the affected African states. Until now, French law refuses to cede property owned by the government, even if that property was acquired through looting. The authors of the report (link in French), Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr and French art historian Benedicte Savoy, called for a change to these “heritage laws” so that the “the criteria of consent can be invoked” on a case-by-case basis. There are about 90,000 African artworks in French museums, most of them housed in the Quai Branly museum, an ethnographic museum that also boasts a large collection of Asian art. It was created by former president Jacques Chirac, an avid collector of African and Asian art. There has been a growing call from a new generation of African leaders, historians and art collectors for the repatriation of Africa’s artistic and cultural heritage. The most significant perhaps came from Benin’s president Patrice Talon, who directly asked Macron to return the treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which was invaded by French troops at the end of the 19th century. This report is the result of a call made by Macron about a year ago during a visit to Burkina Faso. “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums,” he said during a speech at the University of Ouagadougou. The politically astute sentiment appealed to Africa’s young population, who are increasingly being wooed by others international powers like China and Russia. While many, particularly in Africa, have welcomed the report, European art dealers are more skeptical. Some say repatriation could leave France’s museums nearly empty and question just who the art should be returned to since many of these kingdoms no longer exist. Others fear collectors may even start moving the art out of France, fearing state seizure. Simon Njami, the editor of the Paris-based art journal Revue Noire, cynically called the move “a foolish promise” that would never materialize beyond rhetoric. Still, France’s newfound motivation to restore looted artifacts may shame other European states into doing the same. Approximately 180,000 African artworks are held in Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa, while 37,000 objects are in Austria’s Weltmuseum, according to AFP. The British Museum is also in talks to return the ancient Benin Kingdom’s bronze statues to Nigeria.

这些交易已经开始。 亚马逊的黑色星期五特卖周于11月16日开始，并将于11月23日进入黑色星期五。亚马逊各部门已经有数千个折扣，本周将增加新的折扣，直到感恩节周末。然后，您将在11月26日亚马逊网络星期一特卖周开始前休息两天。该轮销售将持续到12月2日。 去年，亚马逊的购买量占所有在线黑色星期五销售量的一半，而2017年网络星期一是亚马逊历史上最大的购物日。也许今年亚马逊对优惠交易的需求可能会分散近期对HQ2的强烈反对。 亚马逊的黑色星期五和网络星期一星期的销售额将持续整整9天，因此可以进行全面的销售。所以，这是一个如何处理它们的指南： 在哪里可以找到亚马逊的黑色星期五和网络星期一优惠 亚马逊在其网站和应用程序上列出其所有黑色星期五优惠。有一天的交易，按部门过滤的能力，显示每笔交易何时到期的计时器，以及当销售项目有限时，显示已经索赔了多少的计量表。 当网络星期一交易周开始时，所有交易将在此处列出。 许多其他网站也为亚马逊的交易周创建了全面的指南，包括Techradar，Digital Trends，CNET和Forbes。 亚马逊将自己的产品放在首位 亚马逊的许多折扣都是减少他们可能只想摆脱的物品，而一些最好的交易将是亚马逊品牌的硬件。这包括对Fire TV产品和Echo设备等物品的大幅降价。 虽然亚马逊拥有近5亿个产品的库存，但值得注意的是，对于一些流行的科技产品 - 如Nintendo Switch和Microsoft Xbox One - 其他零售商如Kohl's或Gamestop将提供可比较的，甚至更好的折扣。 亚马逊将在玩具上有很好的交易 亚马逊提供高达40％的流行玩具折扣，包括芭比和风火轮等美泰品牌，以及许多棋盘游戏，最有可能填补Toys R Us倒闭所留下的空白。今年11月，亚马逊甚至开始向客户发售其首个玩具目录，这表明它正在进入该行业的一个地方。 使用亚马逊应用程序更智能地购物亚马逊应用程序上 的Sneak Peek页面让购物者可以及早了解在黑色星期五和网络星期一周期间可用的产品，以及当前价格（销售价格尚未公布）。为给定项目启用“观看交易”功能意味着您将在其即将开始的交易时进行更新。使用应用程序的相机搜索功能也可以节省额外费用。例如，您可以扫描实体店中任何产品的条形码，并检查亚马逊是否销售它。该应用程序还具有增强现实功能，允许客户虚拟地将数十万个放置在家中，以查看它们的外观。您可以通过这两项功能直接购物，如果您可以节省5美元。 通过亚马逊设备订购将产生额外的节省 与往年一样，在2018年假日季节的Prime会员日，您可以使用Echo设备上的Alexa通过语音购物获得早期优惠和更高折扣.Alexa用户独家提供的早期黑色星期五交易就在这里，而对于网络星期一，早期的语音购物交易将于11月26日太平洋标准时间下午5点开始。所有的Alexa特定交易都是针对总理会员的。 亚马逊总理会员仍然有优势 总理会员可以免费获得两天发货，而非会员免费送货通常需要更长的时间，因此本周或下周可能需要报名参加为期30天的免费试用总理。更重要的是，Prime会员可以独家访问Lightning Deals，只能在有限的时间内使用。 如果您是总理会员，您还可以通过同意免费“免费”运费来获得额外的折扣和奖励。它可以为您提供电子书信用和折扣，从杂货到亚马逊视频租赁。 忘记不要在购物时为慈善机构筹集资金 如果您通过smile.amazon.com购物，亚马逊会将您在符合条件的AmazonSmile产品上花费的一小部分捐赠给您选择的慈善机构。 退出记得亚马逊状语从句：假日购物 亚马逊委托进行的一项调查发现，61％的美国假日购物者享受了寻找一个好假期交易的惊险刺激方面，但这并不意味着你应该只是购买事情为了得到一个很好的折扣。提前制作一份清单有助于避免陷入网上交易的兔子洞，并屈服于冲动购物。而且，既然研究表明体验对人们来说实际上比物质商品更有价值，那么为什么不放弃交易并与亲人一起计划下一次冒险呢？

北哨兵岛的部落 - 孟加拉湾安达曼群岛的一部分 - 似乎不喜欢外人。作为世界上最不起眼的社区之一，印度政府的5公里限制措施加剧了他们的孤立，阻止任何人在他们的家乡附近冒险。 但这并没有阻止美国人约翰洲试图向他们“宣告耶稣”。现在，当局在上周据报被部落的箭杀死后，正试图恢复他的身体。 这不是第一次被认为是从非洲到亚洲最早的迁徙波的一部分的古代人哨兵遭到暴力抵抗入侵。在2004年海啸灾难发生后，印度海岸警卫队的一架直升机在岛上为幸存者进行了调查，他们遇到了试图用长矛和箭头将其击落的部落。2006年，两名印度渔民在他们的船在岛附近意外漂流后被部落砍掉。 然而，也有一些情况，Sentinelese出人意料地欢迎与外界联系。 1991年1月8日，经过二十多年未成功的岛屿探险活动，以及椰子和香蕉等礼物，政府领导的团队与该部落进行了第一次友好接触。“美国学者”援引当时的一份报纸报道说，手无寸铁的Sentinelese向游客表示他们想要礼物，然后游到水里，要求提供椰子。 接下来的一个月，曾参加此类政府探险的人类学家TN潘伟迪再次出发。据报道，这一次，Sentinelese登上了政府的小艇，获得了更多的礼物。Pandit在水中有一张壮观的照片，为其中一个Sentinelese提供了一个椰子，因为附近至少还有四个人的姿势更多。 在2000年接受美国学者采访时，潘迪特描述了他在这次遭遇后的复杂情绪，对部落想要接触感到激动，但看到历史时代结束却令人难过。 印度政府于1997年停止与岛民接触。2011年的人口普查估计现在只剩下大约15名Sentinelese-12男子和3名女子。研究人员Pankaj Sekhsaria在他的着作“群岛中的通量”中写道，这与英国1901年估计的117人相比显着下降。但在今年9月，潘伟迪告诉DownToEarth，他的估计在80到100之间。 作为印度人类学调查的一部分，潘迪特写了关于它们的唯一一本书，即“哨兵报”，这本书今天已经绝版。然而，在采访中，他透露了有关难以捉摸的社区的有趣信息，包括他们居住的小屋以及食物 - 野生水果和鱼类 - 他看到他们做饭。 虽然与其他古代部落社会一样，Sentinelese在使用基本武器进行狩猎和捕鱼的过程中生存下来，但他们的社会并不是原始的，Pandit认为，并且他们并没有真正被与现代世界缺乏联系所剥夺。 毕竟，Andamans-the Great Andamanese，Onge和Jarawas的其他三个部落的命运是一个警示故事，讲述古代和独特社会在外部接触后可能面临的潜在风险。 独立后，印度政府鼓励在安达曼和尼科巴群岛定居，数千人从大陆迁移，迅速超过土着部落。伐木活动的扩大摧毁了大片森林，并且遭受后果的是部落。 多年来，伟大的安达曼人和奥格都看到他们的人数大幅减少。至于贾拉瓦斯，与外界的接触越来越多，他们的生活方式迅速改变，潘迪特和其他研究人员对他们独特身份的丧失感到惋惜，除了他们称之为家园的林地。 “多年来，我们无法让Jarawa获得任何好处......他们的食物供应如蜂蜜，螃蟹和鱼类被取走以换取饼干。他们不需要饼干。他们学会了吸烟和喝酒，“潘迪特告诉DownToEarth。 因此，禁止来自北哨兵岛的外来者对于保护一个独特的古代社会不会永远消失至关重要。

Ahead of a special Brexit summit on Sunday (Nov. 25) among European leaders, the European Union and UK appear to have agreed on an outline of their future relationship. What does it mean? What is the “Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between the EU and the UK?” UK prime minister Theresa May traveled to Brussels on Nov. 21 to negotiate the last bits of text for the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. This text will be voted on by European leaders at an extraordinary European Council summit on Sunday (Nov. 25). This morning Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, announced the two sides had drafted an agreement outlining the EU-UK post-Brexit relationship, known as “the political declaration,” for short: Donald Tusk ✔ @eucopresident I have just sent to EU27 a draft Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between EU and UK. The Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators’ level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the Leaders. 2,497 6:21 PM - Nov 22, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy 2,144 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy You can read the full text of the 26-page agreement here. The political declaration expands upon a seven-page outline version (pdf) published last week. In it, EU and UK leaders lay out the parameters of a post-Brexit trade and political relationship. Analysts say it is a far cry from Theresa May’s so-called “Chequers” proposal, but it strengthens the UK’s position going into Sunday’s summit. This document is separate from the 585-page withdrawal agreement that the UK and EU agreed to last week, which covers the UK’s “divorce bill” and the controversial problem of how to keep the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland open even if trade talks with the EU stall—what’s known as the “backstop.” However, the withdrawal agreement can’t be ratified without the political declaration. What’s in it? Analysts say it contains provisions for the EU and the UK to develop an “ambitious, wide-ranging and balanced economic partnership,” but that the draft agreement stops short of opening a path for the frictionlesss trade deal that Britain has called for (paywall). According to The Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin and Daniel Boffey: The two sides “envisage having a trading relationship on goods that is as close as possible,” but the EU and the UK will be separate markets with inevitable barriers to trade, and there is no reference to a common rulebook. Both sides have committed to regular EU-UK summits, something May has repeatedly called for, in order to reach agreements on other issues such as “access to waters” for fisheries. What does the future partnership document mean? It’s a good sign that the two sides have broadly agreed on what their relationship will look like after Brexit. But the document is not legally binding and it leaves a whole lot of wiggle room for both or either party to change its mind. And, as Sam Coates, the deputy political editor for the Times, argues, it recycles a lot of points both sides have already agreed on: Sam Coates Times ✔ @SamCoatesTimes Political loss for the UK - Can't see any substantive, binding concessions from the EU. - You could have written this two years ago - The story our our relationship with EU may never end. At least in my working lifetime Sam Coates Times ✔ @SamCoatesTimes EU/UK Political Declaration Political wins for the UK - No options shut down. - Doesn't prevent a harder brexit if say, a different UK PM to take the post brexit day negotiations in another direction - Allows for a softer brexit with SM/CU membership where we observe freedoms 665 7:25 PM - Nov 22, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy 457 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy What’s next? Presenting the political declaration to the House of Commons, Theresa May said that the draft text was a “good deal.” “It honors the vote of the British people by taking back control of our borders, our laws, and our money,” May said, before touching on a range of issues that have dogged the process of negotiation, from finance to fishing, to the border in Ireland. “The British people want Brexit to be settled. They want a good deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future, and they want us to come together as a country and to move on, to focus on the big issues at home,” May said towards the end of the eight-minute speech, to a cacophony of cheers and boos from gathered members of parliament. At an earlier press conference, Theresa May repeated her position that the withdrawal agreement “is the right deal for the UK.” UK Prime Minister ✔ @10DowningStreet WATCH LIVE: PM @Theresa_May gives a statement on Brexit https://www.pscp.tv/w/bsaasjIyOTU1OTR8MWxQS3FkZ1JBcW54Yu819pbhypumeXIcf7IoJSNubZujSuzAZcKTAxuzpiQv … 513 8:38 PM - Nov 22, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy UK Prime Minister @10DowningStreet WATCH LIVE: PM @Theresa_May gives a statement on Brexit pscp.tv 788 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy Some countries have expressed reluctance over aspects of the deal, including Spain and France, which May will have to work on. If both the deal and the declaration are approved on Sunday, May will then have to get them through an extremely fractured UK Parliament. Analysts say she does not currently have the votes to get them passed. The British pound rose sharply after the announcement that a political declaration had been agreed upon: But, as Quartz reporter Eshe Nelson has noted, given the pound’s extreme volatility to any Brexit-related news, it would be unwise to celebrate too soon. When it comes to Brexit and financial markets, she writes, “the only certainty is uncertainty.” The withdrawal agreement and political declaration theoretically serve as a foundation for the formal trade talks between the EU and the UK that are set to begin in April 2019. In today’s draft declaration, both sides agreed to start formal negotiations “as soon as possible” after March 29, 2019, the official date of Brexit, with the aim of reaching a final trade deal by the end of 2020, the end of the transition period.

Black Friday, the ultimate American consumerist holiday, has in recent years been exported to the rest of the world. In the UK, department store John Lewis had the busiest single hour in online sales ever during last year’s shopping frenzy. Amazon France, meanwhile, is offering deals just like its US counterpart. But nowhere is the globalization of Black Friday more evident than on Instagram. As traditional retailers offer discounts and deals geared at luring shoppers, Instagram’s influencers—who essentially market their lifestyles—are also out in force. The social network is this week overflowing with well-coiffed subjects in over-lit photographs offering Black Friday deals in a plethora of languages. It’s a perfect confluence of 2018 phenomena. Once a place to share artsy photographs with niche communities, Instagram has in the past few years become a true shopping destination. That’s by design: Parent company Facebook is banking on the platform’s e-commerce potential, building additional purchasing features into the app, and even reportedly designing an entire standalone shopping app. Part of this shift has to do to brands, which have seized on the opportunity to market their products on a platform where many shoppers—especially the valuable demographic of young women—spend a great deal of time. But also important is the rise of the influencer, whose job is, for the most part, to portray an aspirational lifestyle that can be easily sold online. For their sponsored content, influencers get paid in cash or free products. Meanwhile, brands get easy advertising that reaches their target customers, while still feigning authenticity. While there are influencers whose success is based on their originality and creativity, Instagram often incentivizes a certain uniformity: If something gets a lot of likes, the user is rewarded emotionally—that dopamine kick!—and if they are an influencer, the reward is also financial. Thus anything that consistently gets likes is likely to be repeated. Influencers, not unlike regular Instagram users, follow certain templates and patterns set out by successful predecessors, whether it’s natural-looking lighting and wavy blonde tresses, or Kardashian-like sex appeal. The internet is global, so these trends easily spread, and everyone, regardless of what language they write their caption in, starts looking the same. All of those forces—rampant consumerism, an obsession with finding deals, an inability to stop comparing our real lives to the fake lives portrayed by people online—converge on Black Friday, a paragon of American-style consumerist culture that has already traversed the globe. When the whole world is in a shopping mindset, the influencer can’t afford to miss out on the opportunity. Especially if global shipping is involved.

Most of us have experienced the awkwardness of meeting a familiar person and forgetting their name. The experience leads many to lament that they’re “bad with names,” and can cause acute social embarrassment. But a new study suggests that it’s not true: What we’re actually experiencing is the effect of two different kinds of memory, and an interaction between them. Moreover, the research from York University in the UK discovered that subjects were significantly better at remembering the names of strangers than their faces. Remembering a face, the researchers noted, is a matter of recognition. This is a largely unconscious function of the brain, an association of experience with other things that have happened in our lives (like seeing someone every day at the school gates.) But remembering a name requires recall, a different system entirely. When recalling something, the brain “replays” a pattern of neural activity that was first laid down when the mind was given the original stimulus. This process is one reason why it’s sometimes possible to remember something if you think hard enough about it. The findings were recently published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. When we experience forgetting someone’s name, we have by definition already recognized their face, the researchers pointed out; we’re therefore not comparing like with like when we say we can remember faces, but not names. To test which was more memorable in a fairer environment, the researchers showed participants images of strangers, together with their names. Immediately after the learning phase, they tested recall of the faces and names separately, presenting the subjects with a database of faces they’d seen before, slightly different pictures of the same people, and people they’d never seen. They also tested with names in the same or different fonts. The results were clear: When it came to strangers, the subjects were much better at recalling the names than the faces. Participants recognized an average of 73% of faces when shown the same photo, but only 64% when the photo changed. They recognized 85% of names, and that dipped only very slightly when a different font was used. One hypothesis they give for the difference is that when seeing a stranger’s photograph we have only one metric to aid our memory: what they look like. When seeing a word, we have both the look of the letters and the imagined sound, which could give our minds more to cling on to (like seeing a person and also hearing their voice.) Of course, this is just one study, and has its limitations: The experiments were only performed on small groups of students, and they only tested immediate recollection. The researchers didn’t go into why so many people have the experience of finding it hard to recall names, or why names are harder than other types of information. (They cited other tests that have shown that it’s harder to recall names than other types of characteristics: “Baker,” for example, is harder to remember as a surname than as a profession.) But it does give some insight into how our brains operate. “Our life experiences with names and faces have misled us about how our minds work,” said Rob Jenkins, a psychology professor at York and one of the study authors, in a press release. “But if we eliminate the double standards we are placing on memory, we start to see a different picture.”

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