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On July 11, the American economy hit a key milestone in its recovery from the coronavirus: the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World reopened. The world’s most popular theme park had been shuttered since March 16, and the expectation was that Disney lovers from across the U.S., frustrated after months indoors, would flock to Orlando. And in the weeks leading up to the reopening, Disney had more than enough reservations to fill the park to its new, limited capacity. …
$275: That’s how much you’ll pay for a chicken dinner meal kit from the famous Manhattan upscale restaurant Eleven Madison Park, as reported in Bloomberg Quint. (Not included in the price: delivery or cooking.)
Eleven Madison Park’s offering is only the latest in a string of fancy meal kits offered by high-end restaurants. …
Rebecca Welch remembers all too well the Thanksgiving Day she pulled the turkey out of the refrigerator to prep it for the oven and, with a crowd of in-laws standing around watching, realized it was still frozen solid. “I tried to remember everything I knew about thawing, but I was panicking,” she says. Finally, Welch did what some 100,000 other people do every year around Thanksgiving: She called Butterball’s Turkey Talk Line for help. The person at the other end talked her through the warm-water fast-thaw hack, and Thanksgiving was saved.
Many years later, Welch remains a little embarrassed about the experience. After all, as senior brand manager for Butterball, the company that produces Butterball turkeys, she might be expected to be above that sort of turkey trouble. But during those high-pressure holiday moments, even the pros can lose their cool. …
It was only last November that the Walt Disney Company introduced its own streaming service, Disney+. At the time, pulling its intellectual property from other services and building an exclusive destination for all things Disney seemed like a plausible gamble — but by no means a certain one. After all, this was a plunge into a full-on streaming war with Netflix, Apple, and HBO.
But looking back, the bet doesn’t merely seem smart — it also seems like incredibly lucky timing. Seven months into the pandemic — with movie theaters idle, film and TV studios facing mass layoffs, and theme parks closed or sparsely attended — Disney+ has turned out to be a lifeline. The service already has around 60 million subscribers, and even Netflix’s Reed Hastings has praised it. …
Looking for a great read this weekend? Marker’s editors have compiled a list of some of the thought-provoking articles on Medium that we’ve been reading and talking about. Enjoy your weekend and happy reading (and highlighting!).
In this profile of identity certification company Clear, OneZero writer Dave Gershgorn details how it has expanded way beyond its initial airport screenings — and during the pandemic has set its sights on the healthcare business. — Sarah Kessler, Senior Editor, One Zero and Marker
It might be the understatement of the century to say that 2020 has been a scary year. But as Bärí A. Williams explains in ZORA, we can learn a lot about our current uncertainty from a scare that took place just twenty years prior: Y2K. While the computer crisis itself never happened, the resulting fear forced consumers to hoard food, stash money under their mattress, and buy more guns. …
35%: That’s how much the market for casino hotels in the United States has declined in 2020, according to data from the market research firm IBISWorld. According to the same report, the U.S. casino hotel sector currently has a market size of around $44 billion, down from around $68 billion in 2019.
The year 2020 has been a brutal one for casinos, which have been hit by the collapse in tourism and travel that has affected all hotels during the pandemic, as well as the rise in alternative avenues for those with a penchant for gambling. The fantasy sports betting site DraftKings has seen its revenues and usage climb steeply over the past couple quarters, and the stock trading app Robinhood may have just introduced a new class of amateur investors to the thrills of gambling on the stock market. …
$2.5 billion: That’s how much Uber has spent on its self-driving car technology over the last five years, according to The Information. Despite this investment, a manager working on the project reportedly described the car as still “struggl[ing] with simple routes and simple maneuvers” in an email to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Uber’s attempt to build autonomous driving technology has been plagued with problems since its early days. In 2017, the head of the project, Anthony Levandowski, was fired amid accusations (to which he pleaded guilty) that he stole proprietary data from Google’s self-driving car project. In 2018, one of Uber’s self-driving car prototypes struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, during a test drive. …
Some words of wisdom from author Susan Orlean who makes the case for looking presentable to enter into productivity mode. “It’s hard enough to delineate home life and work life,” she writes. “I can’t think well unless I’ve showered and put on something decent.” Turns out, Orlean may be onto something. As Marker recently reported, nearly 9% of Americans have been working 24 or more hours a week from their beds since the start of the pandemic, according to a survey by Tuck Sleep. To no one’s surprise: Those same survey respondents reported feeling less than productive while working under the covers.
Clear, the New York-based biometric company best know for shuffling you through airport security, is leading the new touchless industry, a burgeoning front in the age of around-the-clock commercialized surveillance.
When you hand over your iris scan or fingerprints to companies like Clear, you get whisked through stadium beer lines, and into stores and office elevators. It’s an unusual, once-in-a-lifetime, super-charging event for the surveillance firms, rebranding themselves as “touchless” while becoming an answer for anyone contemplating how to safely reopen.
But, as Dave Gershgorn writes at OneZero, there is danger in this shift: Your personal data is also then hackable by Iran, China, North Korea, Russia, or any number of private actors, well- or malignly intended.
Every decade, there’s at least one financial crisis somewhere in the world. …
