Happy Saturday.
To be ITK, know this:
Itlay votes: Italians vote on Sunday for the first time in almost five years in national elections.
+ Polls will be open from 7:00 am until 11:00 pm.
+ Exit polls should come out the night of the vote, but since voting places close at 11:00 pm (5:00 pm ET), no official results are expected to be declared until the next day, or even later.
+ The Italian right could get as much as 45 percent of votes, according to Politico’s Poll of Polls.
Read this: How to watch the Italian election like a pro: Italy votes on September 25. Here’s what you need to know. Politico
Read this: Giorgia Meloni could be the first woman to lead Italy. Not all women are happy. Some fear that the hard-right politician, whose party is expected to be the big winner in the election on Sunday, will continue policies that have kept women back. NYT
+ Being a woman, and mother, has been central to the political pitch of Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right politician who is likely to become Italy’s prime minister after elections on Sunday.
+ Her most famous speech includes the refrain “I am a woman. I am a mother.”
+ Four out of 10 Italian women don’t work.
+ Unemployment rates are even higher for young women starting careers.
+ Female chief executive officers lead only a tiny percentage of companies listed on Milan’s stock exchange, and there are fewer than 10 female rectors at Italy’s more than 80 universities.
Read this: Giorgia Meloni: The far-right firebrand poised to be Italy’s next premier: Charismatic and persistent, this formidable politician is on her way to being the country’s first female prime minister. FT
+ Meloni, president of the Brothers of Italy party, stands on the cusp of history, tipped to become Italy’s first ever female prime minister.
+ The world is now waiting to see which Meloni will emerge as premier: the pragmatist or the far-right ideologue who has made a virtue of refusing to compromise on her values.
+ “She is transgressive in a way that is similar to Donald Trump — this strongman personality. She has been able to normalize these conspiracy theories that were not seen in Italian politics.”
Read this: The tipping point of stupid: In most states, you can’t pass yourself off as an election-denying January 6 truther and still be taken seriously by a majority of voters. Mark Leibovich
+ In recent weeks, Trump’s trickle-down idiocy has become a significant midterm-election issue for Republicans, and a drag on some of the party’s most vulnerable Senate candidates.
+ If you’re a candidate seeking a GOP nomination, Trump’s blessing can be a political wonder drug. But it comes with debilitating side effects.
+ Absent Trump, Republican candidates in 2022 would be able to focus on subjects that would be more favorable to them and their party, such as inflation, crime, and Biden’s unpopularity.
Read this: Trump and DeSantis: Once allies, now in simmering rivalry with 2024 nearing: The two are widely seen in the Republican Party as potential rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination, and public contrasts and behind-the-scenes tensions have already erupted. WP
DeSantis will be a poor candidate on the campaign trail and will underperform with presidential primary voters.
His success is driven by TV - pressers, Fox interviews, and paid media.
Running for president in America is the decathlon of politics requiring numerous skills.
+ "Republican operatives and donors who have interacted with DeSantis said he sometimes struggles to connect with people, and his speeches are often didactic — not dazzling the crowd. It is unclear how his insular orbit would exist in a sprawling presidential operation"
Read this: The takedown of Tom Barrack: With Tom Barrack’s trial beginning on charges of acting as an agent of a foreign government, the future of Donald Trump’s inaugural chairman—a onetime real estate billionaire—is now in the hands of 12 jurors. But how did he get here? LA Mag
Lesson: Get to know FARA.
Read this: The Kremlin must be in crisis: Putin’s erratic actions are not those of a secure leader. Anne Applebaum
Social media abuzz with rumour of coup in Beijing against Xi Jinping: India Today reports according to several posts on the Internet, Jinping, who was recently in Samarkand for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or SCO, summit, was removed as the chief of China’s People’s Liberation Army, or the PLA.
+ @niubi: Lots of rumors today, no credible sources so far
+ If you have a problem with the CCP, you're going to hate the PLA.
+ Has anyone at the White House called Zhongnanhai this morning?
Read this: US senators increase pressure on Apple over possible Chinese chipmaker deal: Call for national security review comes as iPhone maker considers using YMTC chips. FT
+ Senators have asked the intelligence community to examine the threat potential for a deal with Apple and the Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co, in an escalation of the political pressure being applied to the iPhone maker over the arrangement.
Read this: Why trade couldn’t buy peace: We thought globalization was immune from geopolitical risk. We were wrong. John Plender
+ “The story of the human race is war,” said Winston Churchill. “Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world; and before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending.”
+ A more fundamental point is that wealth in modern economies, which relates more to people than natural endowments, is much harder to steal through force than was the case with agricultural and early industrial societies.
+ Indeed, globalization itself may have reduced the spoils of territorial conquest by making it easier to acquire resources via markets rather than the use of force.
+ VW is estimated to rely on China for at least half of its annual net profits.
+ VW’s recently fired chief executive Herbert Diess remarked last year: “China probably doesn’t need VW, but VW needs China a lot.”
Read this: The male beauty rebellion in China: Foreign groups are losing ground against nimble local upstarts in the $10bn market. FT
+ China’s fledging male beauty market is expected to top $10bn this year, and double again over the next three years, as local and foreign businesses target hundreds of millions of new customers.
+ Goldman Sachs has forecast total cosmetics spending in China will hit $120bn by 2026, from about $82bn in 2021.
+ Xi Jinping has tried to halt the rise of niang pao, a slur meaning “sissy boys”, as he attempts to reform the country’s youth culture and encourage masculinity.
Read this: Americans have always bought too much car. Now they’re doing it with EVs: Most US car trips are 30 miles or less—but American drivers won’t settle for an electric vehicle with less than 300 miles of range. Bloomberg
Read this: GM’s commitment to electric cars still has skeptics: General Motors joined forces with the Environmental Defense Fund to recommend tougher emissions rules for passenger vehicles. Critics aren’t convinced. Bloomberg
WP: With eye on storm, NASA presses ahead with Artemis launch attempt
+ NASA is hoping to launch its Space Launch System rocket and uncrewed Orion spacecraft to the moon as soon as Tuesday.
CBC: NASA is slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday to test planetary defense
+ Refrigerator-sized spacecraft will impact a small asteroid at 6.6 km/s.
+ NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is testing a way in which a spacecraft may be able to nudge an asteroid on a collision course with Earth out of its orbit.
Read this: Grapes, berries, and robots: is Silicon Valley coming for farm workers jobs? Guardian
+ The global ag-tech revolution has sped up in recent years, spurring a debate on how it will affect the workforce.
+ An example cited is how mechanization brought into tomato harvesting in the 1960s resulted in an estimated 32,000 farm workers losing their jobs and pushing hundreds of small farms out of business.
+ In 2020, ag-tech startups in California received $5.6bn in venture capital funding.
Read this: The airline industry is in trouble. Is bottomless caviar the answer? Lobster thermidor, acclaimed chefs, and recipes with NDAs: inside the test kitchens of the world’s most experimental airlines. Kitty Drake
+ "As the airline industry lurches forward after successive COVID-19 lockdowns, food has become a kind of weapon."
+ A month ago, Emirates launched a “bottomless caviar” service for premium passengers, part of a refurb that cost $2bn.
+ Business and first-class account for about one-third of all airline seats but generate up to 70 percent of revenue.
+ At 35,000ft, the human tongue goes partially numb, causing you to lose about one-third of your taste buds.
+ Even the sound of the engine changes the way food tastes.
+ Singapore Airlines spent more than £300mn on food in 2022 and has a reputation for luxury.
Read this: The beautiful banality of BeReal: Are you up to speed with your photo-sharing apps? Jo Ellison
+ "It’s a social media app billed as the anti-Instagram, developed in 2020 by two Frenchmen, Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau, which has been enjoying a surge of interest in recent months."
+ "The app is basically a sharing platform where, following a daily alert, users must take a selfie on their phone within two minutes."
+ "The app then utilizes the camera’s double-facing function so that the resulting selfie is set into a broader portrait of what you’re doing at the time."
+ "Part game, part scrapbook, part communication tool, the app has been downloaded more than 28mn times and now has more than 15mn daily users, of whom the vast majority are described as being from Gen Z."
+ "BeReal’s growth has rattled the millennial Instagram, however, and the Meta-owned photo-sharing app has launched a similar two-way functionality in an attempt to snatch back market share."
+ "It’s boring, banal, and totally bemusing, and that’s precisely why I’m sticking with BeReal."
Read this: What Canada’s largest art heist reveals about the art world’s shady side: The stolen masterpieces have never turned up—and nobody’s really looking for them. The Walrus
+ The stolen masterpieces have never turned up—and nobody’s really looking for them.
+ Art crime rarely provokes anger. We react with apathy, unless a heist somehow captures our attention, in which case we display a kind of benevolent fascination.
+ But should museum heists outrage us? This question is complicated by the fact that Western museums are themselves repositories of stolen art.
+ In a much-quoted 2007 speech at a UNESCO event in Paris, Beninese curator Alain Godonou estimated that of all the African art held in museums around the world, between 90 and 95 percent resides outside of Africa.
Read this: How much money will actually make you happy? We can all fantasize about what we need to make ourselves satisfied — and it doesn’t have to be a fortune. Tim Harford
+ "The real problem is that being a multibillionaire would change your relationship with every other human being."
+ "The richest people in past societies had material wants which they could not satisfy, but which we can: air conditioning, air travel, and antibiotics."
St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols hits his 700th career home run, joining Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth as the only major leaguers to reach the milestone.
ESPN: USMNT has no answer for Japan in friendly loss that illustrates the work that lies ahead of the World Cup
+ The scoreline flattered the US team's woeful performance, as the Americans looked completely out of sync throughout the match. It's clear that even at this late stage, US manager Gregg Berhalter has some work to do.
+ The US is now 1-3-2 this year against teams that have qualified for November's World Cup.
Guardian: Punchless USA silenced by Japan in penultimate World Cup tune-up
+ Japan beat a lackluster and injury-depleted United States 2-0 on Friday in Düsseldorf, Germany, in the Americans’ next-to-last World Cup warmup.
+ Back in the World Cup after missing the 2018 tournament, the Americans open in Qatar against No. 19 Wales on 21 November, play fifth-ranked England four days later and close the first round against No. 22 Iran on 29 November.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
Caracal produces ITK Daily.
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Clients are Chief Communications Officers with global responsibility who rely on Caracal for help navigating today's interconnected business environment with political intelligence, research, strategic planning, public affairs, and communications.
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