Hello! Tampa Mayor Jane Castor was shocked by an unexpected catch during a Florida Keys fishing trip last week: 70 lbs of cocaine, worth more than $1 million… she must be reeling from the incident. Today we're exploring:
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After 6 consecutive months of rising youth unemployment in urban areas of China, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced it would no longer be publishing the figures — it did, however, release a host of other disappointing financial data that saw the country’s economic outlook darken.
A spokesperson for the NBS claimed that it’s suspending the data in an effort to “optimize” collection methods, conceding that the current 16-24 age bracket “needs further research”. However, after the share of unemployed young people in urban China hit record highs in each of the last 3 months and capped out at 21.3% in June, many suspect ulterior motives in taking the figures behind closed doors.
No news is bad news
The announcement quickly started trending on Chinese social media site Weibo, where users questioned the decision. With falling exports, weakened consumer spending, an ailing property market, and a waning birth rate, youth unemployment is just one in a list of concerns for the world’s second-largest economy — and some believe the true rate could be even higher than the numbers Chinese authorities were putting out.
The NBS started reporting the figure back in January 2018, when it sat at a modest 11%, not far from the comparable US rate for that year of 9%. The share of unemployed 16-24-year-olds in urban parts of the country — China has never published rural figures — has grown substantially and really accelerated this year, with the final record-breaking June number up some 6% since January.
iM 25!
On August 15, 1998, Apple launched the first iMac computer, marking a significant milestone that — perhaps worryingly for those who vividly recall buying the stocky, translucent desktop — now lies 25 years behind us.
Steve Jobs had returned to Apple just one year earlier, aiming to breathe new life into the company's fading fortunes. With Jobs and design visionary Jony Ive at the helm, Apple created a fresh incarnation of the all-in-one computer concept that they popularized with the Macintosh back in 1984.
The iMac, often credited as Apple’s savior, helped to rekindle the company's profitability. In 2001, when the first iPod was unveiled to the world, Mac sales commanded a staggering 70% share of the company's net revenue, contributing an impressive $4.4 billion.
Desktoppled
However, today's spotlight on Apple's stage has indisputably shifted to the iPhone, leaving Macs in the wings somewhat. Indeed, the current iteration of the iMac, which pays homage to its ancestor with a vibrant spectrum of 7 colors, has not received an update in over 800 days — the longest gap in its history.
Macs, once the cornerstone of Apple's success, now represent a mere fraction of total net sales, contributing around 10% at $40 billion — a number that’s more reliant on laptops than desktops now, too. As hybrid work seems set to stick around and we rely on portable devices more than ever, it’s difficult to imagine the iMac regaining its place atop the Apple throne — but, at least for a while, the Bondi blue behemoth ruled.
Higher profiles
Life stories are like a box of chocolates… and 2023 is shaping up to be a year chock-full of biographical movies.
In the fallout of Oppenheimer-mania, Netflix has revealed the trailer for upcoming biopic ‘Maestro', directed by and starring Bradley Cooper as the famed composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Set to premiere in November, going head-to-head with Ridley Scott’s historic blockbuster ‘Napoleon’, Maestro will join some 15 biographical films that have been released so far this year.
If you’re not overly familiar with Bernstein’s work, which includes writing the score for the Broadway musical West Side Story, you’re not alone: Bernstein’s Wikipedia page has been viewed over 30,000 times in the past 24 hours.
Bi-epics
Since the Academy Awards began in 1929, biopics have received 126 Best Picture nominations, winning a total of 22. Actors also seem to fare better when they star in movie memoirs: performers playing real people have been nominated 359 times at the Oscars, with 8 of those in 2021 alone.
However, biopics have only recently started to match their critical acclaim with commercial success. Since 2010, 8 biographical movies have seen their protagonists win Best Actor — 4 of which, including 2019’s Bohemian Rhapsody, grossed over $100 million. In the 30 years before that, though, only 11 biopics scooped Best Actor Oscars, and not one of these met the $100 million threshold.
Ironically, the two highest-grossing movies to have received the Best Actor award, Forrest Gump in 1995 and Joker in 2020, both place a single character’s life story at the heart of the action, albeit a fictional one.
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• Popping off: ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s bubblegum company just sold for $700 million.
• Are you rich by your neighborhood's standards? Bloomberg’s new calculator will tell you.
• With a wealth of charts on July’s record temperatures, this 100-year reflection is up there with our favorites.
Off the charts: A year ago today, the Inflation Reduction Act, which set increased clean energy spending as a key goal, was signed into law — but what is currently the largest source of renewable energy in the US? [Answer below].
