Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• What the F.B.I.’s Raid of Mar-a-Lago Could Mean for Trump - A former federal prosecutor and general counsel for the F.B.I. explains the process and implications of obtaining a search warrant on the home of a former President. - link

• The Democrats Finally Deliver - The Senate’s passage of a sweeping, if imperfect, climate-change-and-health-care bill is a landmark moment in U.S. policymaking. - link

• How Hurricanes Get Their Names - In an age of more intense storms, forecasters explain their aims. - link

• Google’s Caste-Bias Problem - A talk about bigotry was cancelled amid accusations of reverse discrimination. Whom was the company trying to protect? - link

• Liz Cheney’s Kamikaze Campaign - Unlike most of her Republican colleagues, the Wyoming representative is willing to lose her seat to take down Donald Trump. - link

From Vox

• Buy now, pay later often means you just pay more -

  

  Buy now, pay later sounds too good to be true because it is.

  The thing about buy now, pay later is that the later part always comes. Sometimes, the pay ends up being more than you think you’re signing up for, and often for stuff you shouldn’t have bought in the first place.

  The buy now, pay later — or BNPL — trend has been on the rise for years, driven by companies such as Afterpay, Klarna, and Affirm. Practically every time you go to buy something online lately, there’s an offer to pay in installments. It seems simple enough on its face: You make a purchase, and instead of paying for the whole thing upfront, it’s split up into four interest-free payments, usually every two weeks. TikTokers pitch it as a savvy way to buy on a budget, an option for getting the things you want and need even if you don’t quite have enough to foot the entire bill right now. Plus, hey, you’re not dealing with the evil credit card companies.

  If this all sounds a little bit too good to be true, it’s because it is. That overpriced dress you just bought is still overpriced, but the smaller payments make you feel more compelled to splurge on it. You are still walking around in pants that aren’t technically paid off.

  “It is marketed as interest-free, but consumers can find that they end up being charged more than they think they will,” said Nadine Chabrier, senior policy and litigation counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. “Should they lose track of their payments or have multiple buy now, pay later purchases, they can get return payment fees, missed payment fees, account reactivation, rescheduling, all kinds of hidden fees that they weren’t aware of at the outset.”

  BNPL companies often don’t do in-depth checks of consumers’ credit, meaning people wind up getting into debt they can’t pay. If someone screws up, they can be hit with late fees and see their credit scores dinged. And screwing up is easy to do if people are taking out multiple loans or just aren’t accustomed to paying on a bimonthly basis, unlike other bills. If a consumer buys something on BNPL and the product isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, there’s a mistake, or they need to return it, getting their money back can be more complicated than with other forms of payment. The opportunity to pay in installments encourages consumers to buy more than they would otherwise.

  At the moment, many BNPL companies exist in a sort of regulatory gray area and skirt laws that apply to more traditional lenders. There’s a push among consumer advocates and in states such as California and Massachusetts to increase scrutiny on BNPL companies and get them in line, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, is looking into them, too. It’s just one industry hoping to sneak in a win at regulatory whack-a-mole.

  “You always have these new companies that say, ‘We’re different, we’re new, we’re quick, and the regulators don’t know how to regulate us because we’re so new and fast and techy or whatever,’” said Chi Chi Wu, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “And you know what? No.”

  The cost of putting off paying

  Buy now, pay later companies make much of their money through merchant fees, meaning they take certain cuts of purchases — say, 2 to 8 percent. That’s more than credit cards take, but as Chabrier explained, merchants are willing to pay up because the ability to pay in installments increases cart sizes. “They do, in fact, induce people to buy more than they normally would because they’re splitting it up,” she said.

  You might pause more at spending $100 on the spot than you would at spending $200 split up into four $50 payments.

  These companies can also wind up making money when consumers who use them make mistakes, Chabrier noted. “If you have, as many people do, five buy now pay later purchases and you make one false move, then you’re going to get hit with these unexpected fees,” she said, such as late fees if you miss a payment, “and maybe an overdraft fee from your bank.”

  Those false moves are common. One recent survey from LendingTree found that 42 percent of Americans who have taken out a BNPL loan have made at least one late payment on it. According to the Wall Street Journal, BNPL companies are seeing an increase in bad debt and late payments.

  Consumers who use BNPL services tend to be younger, and many are people of color. Some also have subprime credit, meaning they might struggle with accessing traditional forms of credit. BNPL businesses say they’re offering financial inclusion, that they’re extending credit to people who can’t get it elsewhere. That may be true in many cases, but the line between predatory and progressive is blurry. One study from TransUnion found that BNPL customers have more credit products, such as credit cards, retail cards, and installment loans, than the general “credit active” population. Lenders in the space often have no idea whether the consumers they’re working with actually have the ability to pay.

  “With buy now, pay later, you’re not taking into account the other financial obligations consumers may have,” said Elyse Hicks, consumer policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. You don’t have to look far on the internet to find stories of millennials and Gen Z over their heads in debt because of BNPL, and with inflation and the current precarious state of the economy, the situation could become worse.

  We still don’t really know how to deal with credit, or regulate it

  How to approach credit — who should get it, how much should be charged for it, what happens for people who are left out — is a difficult issue. We want people to be able to buy things, and credit is a central force of the economy. Millions of people in the country don’t have access to banks and get shut out by the more conventional credit system. We also don’t want people to get hurt because of debts they can’t get out of, or taken advantage of by lenders because they don’t understand the terms.

  Consumer advocates don’t necessarily argue that BNPL shouldn’t exist, but they say it needs more scrutiny and regulatory oversight, and that people should be given a better idea of what they’re getting into. Consumer protection laws, such as the Truth in Lending Act, which protects consumers against inaccurate and unfair credit practices, aren’t yet being applied to BNPL. (There’s a reason BNPL companies do four payments — the 1968 law kicks in on consumer loans once they’re split into five.)

  The “jury’s still out” on exactly what BNPL implies for consumers, said Robert Lawless, a law professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in consumer finance. He gave the example of payday lenders and buy here, pay here car lots, both of which at first glance appear to offer useful solutions for people with poor or invisible credit. “But we know the facts, that as applied, those are very abusive industries,” he said. Over the years, there have been many consumer finance innovations that have claimed to be in consumers’ interests. “I think we still don’t have enough experience to know where buy now, pay later is going to go.”

  He pointed out that the problem of businesses trying to skirt laws concerning credit and debt is hardly new. In the 20th century, lenders and stores tried to get around usury laws that dictate interest rates by claiming they weren’t charging interest but were instead basing prices on a “time-price differential,” Lawless said, meaning charging one price if a product is paid for upfront and another if it’s paid for in installments over time. “If that sounds like bullshit, it’s because it is. It’s just interest by another name.”

  There are countless examples of tactics and products that try to get around financial regulations and rules. There are so-called rent-a-bank agreements, where high-cost lenders try to get around state interest rate caps, and earned wage access products — basically, payday advances — that companies argue don’t technically fall under the Truth in Lending Act because they don’t have fees (instead, for example, some of those companies ask for tips). “It is all along this continuum of novel products and lack of regulation that needs to be addressed,” Chabrier said.

  Much of the time regulators catch up and these issues do get taken care of — but it takes time. In the meantime, on offers such as buy now, pay later, many consumers wind up losing their (only partially paid-off) shirts. It’s worth noting Apple is about to start offering a BNPL product, too. “What happens when you convince a generation to spend more than it can afford?” Scott Galloway, an NYU marketing professor and co-host of the podcast Pivot, recently asked in New York magazine. We may be about to find out.

  As Bloomberg recently outlined, between the threat of regulation, economic uncertainty, and consumers floundering under debt, many companies in the space are already in trouble, and their values are plummeting.

  BNPL companies may now be in a pickle, the way that so many of their customers already are.

  We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to The Big Squeeze.

  Sign up to get this column in your inbox.

  Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email emily.stewart@vox.com.

• Why do wigs on TV look so awful? -

  

  A Hollywood hairstylist on why onscreen wigs don’t look anything like they should.

  Reimagining regular, human actors and actresses as superheroes for the big screen usually requires a few things: a sense of otherworldly gravitas, an intense exercise regimen, and excellent costuming, which includes wigs. On this last point, Hollywood struggles. Even in 2022, wigs in movies and TV are still coming up short.

  A perfect example of this is the third season of The Boys on Amazon Prime. Throughout the latter half of the season, viewers are face-to-screen with Queen Maeve’s awful, terrible wig. It was just so … wiggy. It didn’t look too far off from an image that could be found in an Amazon wig review. But Queen Maeve’s wig wasn’t a $30 wig received via two-day shipping. It was featured on a television show with special effects so high-tech that they recreated the inside of a man’s penis. Yet they were unable to get me to believe that Queen Maeve’s tresses had actually grown from her head.

  There’s no limit to the number of bad onscreen wigs that we’ve seen over the years. Tyler Perry is often asked about the terrible wigs he allows on his productions, most notably Shemar Moore’s infamously horrific cornrow wig in Madea’s Family Reunion. The wigs in Twilight looked like cosplay at best. After dyeing her hair blonde and having to cut it off from the damage the hair dye caused, Jessica Alba donned a wig for the Fantastic Four sequel, and one critic described it as “a ridiculously bad wig that a neophyte drag queen from a small town in Nebraska would have turned her nose up at.”

  What’s particularly irksome about being forced to look at godawful wigs onscreen is that if you take a quick look around, you can find plenty of examples of properly applied wigs. Whether it’s women (especially Black and brown women) walking down the street or the YouTube and TikTok tutorials that you can watch by the dozen to learn how to properly put on your first lace front, wigs can look good. Knowing what Black women can do with some HD lace (the part of the wig that meets the skin) , literally blending hairlines into the skin, why on earth are wigs on TV so bad?

  Camille Friend, a veteran hairstyling professional who’s worked on films like Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Captain America: Civil War, says there are a few major reasons wigs end up looking so busted onscreen. One reason is the budget.

  “If all you have for a wig budget is $10,000, that’s one wig,” she says. “Those are decisions people have to make. If you’re doing bigger movies, your budget is $100,000; it gives you leeway, and you can buy better wigs and get better looks.”

  The second reason is skill. At the end of the day, it takes a lot of skill and time to make a cheap wig look good onscreen, but it’s possible. Friend runs Hair Scholars, which offers master classes and mentorship programs focused on specialty skills needed for the film and TV business. “There are so many tricks of the trade,” she says. “A lot of the time, people don’t get the knowledge. There’s always little things you can do to take an inexpensive wig and make it look expensive.”

  some of my favorite bad wigs in movies/tv pic.twitter.com/oXNBjT9Are

  — chibodee crocket (@de_avis_) October 8, 2018

But there are also things that contribute to wigs looking fake onscreen that are out of a stylist’s control. Friend says this is when a good relationship with other production staff comes into play. “You want to have good relationships with your DP or gaffer. I’m very vocal about good lighting, because lighting can make or break us.” Friend also stresses the importance of camera tests that play with color, which requires a set that is invested in the process.

Justin Dickson, a gaffer and lighting technician who has worked on the set of shows like Insecure, Snowfall, and On My Block, agrees that the relationship between hairstylists and other production staff is of the utmost importance. Dickson says it’s important to speak to stylists and get inside the hair and makeup trailer to make sure the lighting matches the color temperature of the lights on set. This requires a budget and schedule that prioritizes things like realistic hair and makeup — and, most important, hairstylists who know what they’re doing.

Imani Bee, a wellness advocate who acts, models, and works as a development executive at THORO Artists, says she has worked with stylists who seem to come from the Tyler Perry school of wig styling. When she works on sets, she usually brings her own wigs and extensions so that the stylists don’t have to do anything. However, when she was working abroad on one set in South Korea, the stylists told Bee they would be doing her hair. “I was so nervous about the shoot itself and I wanted people to like me and to get more opportunities,” Bee says. She had brought a wig, and when the stylist was finished applying it, Bee found it sitting halfway off her head. She didn’t end up saying anything because she was 19 at the time, and didn’t want to ruffle any feathers.

Bee says these types of experiences are made worse when there are few or no Black stylists or actors on set. “If it’s an all-white cast, nine times out of 10, they’re not going to put the budget toward the one nonwhite cast member,” she says. At her most recent gig, Bee did her own hair on set because she was told there was no one on set who could do it. Friend stresses the importance of having Black hairstylists on all kinds of sets. It’s one of her personal goals through her educational program Hair Scholars. It’s important that Black stylists don’t stay pigeonholed, only working on predominantly Black sets. Friend gives these stylists both the technical skills and the networking skills to make sure Black stylists are everywhere, from TV to million-dollar movie sets.

What about the countless hairstylists on social media who seem incredibly talented and know how to make a wig look good? According to entertainment professionals like Friend, the wigs on movie sets are for an entirely different purpose than the ones you see online. When hairstylists on social media apply wigs, they are usually using silicon glue to adhere their hair to a wig cap, so they can wear it overnight, or for a few days. And like Friend says, wigs on movie sets can cost upward of $10,000. A wig that a stylist like Friend works with on sets uses the finest lace, finer than any you can find on a wig ready to purchase. That, on top of the high-quality materials used in the rest of the wig, can contribute to a much more expensive product. Actresses are not leaving sets with $10,000 on their heads.

The other thing to keep in mind is that sometimes it’s not necessarily a bad thing for a hairstyle to not look natural. “There’s overlap, but you have to know your medium. If I’m going to do something on the red carpet or a photo shoot, I can come in there with big, bad [hair],” Friend says. This is different than when she’s styling for someone who’s supposed to look like a normal, run-of-the-mill person. There’s a difference between something looking like a good wig and something looking like natural hair. Bee points to all of the hairstyles featured on Insecure as an example of styles that are not designed to make the audience believe that the hair had grown from the actress’s head. “It was one of the few projects I watched where I was looking at the hair and was impressed. … I wanted to achieve the styles that Issa [Rae] had on that show,” Bee says.

There’s a difference between realistic hair and a good wig. For productions that feature Black actors, and Black women specifically, the purpose of the hairstyling isn’t necessarily to be realistic as much as it is to reflect the reality of how a Black woman might actually do her hair.

On the other hand, for actors of any race, a wig can be an integral part of the storytelling process. For example, in Stranger Things, the character Eleven’s hair represented what she was going through on the show. In the beginning, Millie Bobbi Brown cut her hair into a buzzcut, which was narratively integral to the show. Years later, when the story again called for her character’s hair to be buzzed, the show used a realistic, short-haired wig.

Which brings us back to superhero movies. Friend, who has worked on seven Marvel movies, says, “When you go do a superhero movie, there’s already a blueprint because you have a comic book, fans. Things have already been somewhat established. … [The look is] something that’s already been talked about and set.”

The base material for the HBO Max series Titans features an alien superhero named Starfire, known for bright green eyes and even brighter red hair. In Titans, Starfire is played by Anna Diop, a Black actress. In the first images released of Diop as Starfire, fans were startled by her hair. The costuming, the hair in particular, was shocking because of how bad it was. (Separately, Diop faced a heinous torrent of racist harassment, based solely on the casting of a Black woman as Starfire. We’ll leave that aside, for now.) Fortunately, the second and third seasons saw vast improvements in her hair, which made for a better overall viewing experience.

It may seem odd that something as seemingly innocuous as a wig can influence the success of storytelling, but it’s true.

“Someone can be taken out of the story by looking at a bad wig. They forget what the story is about and zero in on ‘something’s not right,’ even if they don’t know what it is,” Dickson says.

And in the case of Black characters with bad hair, it’s … embarrassing. Like there wasn’t enough care on set to make sure this person didn’t show up on camera looking wild. This becomes particularly egregious when there are only one or two Black actors on set, as Bee has experienced. When this happens on sets with budgets of millions of dollars, what does that say about how much these sets value Black actors?

The sad fact of the matter is that in some cases, white people just can’t tell what a bad wig is. If a stylist is on set and thinking about how an audience might react to hair, they might not be actively thinking about how it looks to an audience that knows how to clock a wig. Even if the stylist can see the flaws, they might think they can get away with it. Unfortunately, for viewers who can spot the difference, they can’t help but notice. And if the wig is being applied on one of few Black actors on a cast, it can end up making them look like a joke. The lack of diversity and inclusion for Black actors is reflected in thousands of ways and sets, and wigs that are more like hats than hair are just one example.

The disastrous wig situation onscreen seems to be due to a combination of failures — most often, it is likely the result of commonly low budgets and occasionally low efforts on the part of the production team. But from the silver screen to television, when bad wigs are applied to actors’ heads, we all suffer. Instead of being able to enjoy what we’re watching, we’re having to rip our eyes away from terrible hairlines, visible lace, and frizzy hair. It’s fairly obvious that Hollywood has a wig problem. What remains to be seen is what productions are willing to invest to address it.

• The rise of the side startup -

  

  Remote workers are starting new businesses behind their bosses’ backs.

  Shari Rose is working on her own SEO company while doing SEO full time for someone else.

  Her full-time job involves helping dentists in California, but her new business, Blurred Bylines, focuses on small firms and nonprofits in Michigan, where she lives and works remotely. Rose says her main job is still her main priority. She also says her job is aware of her startup and is okay with it.

  “They were very explicit in saying that they really needed me, and they really wanted me to stick around,” she said. “I get the impression that they are willing to make a couple of sacrifices.”

  Rose is one of an increasing number of remote workers who are using the freedom, flexibility, and time saved by working remotely to start their own businesses, without sacrificing their steady paychecks. These founders say the ability to work on their businesses during lunch breaks and lulls at their jobs has enabled them to pursue something more meaningful than their day job. They’re also motivated by many of the same forces driving the so-called Great Resignation, namely how the pandemic caused people to reassess what’s important in their lives. But instead of quitting or finding another job, this cohort is taking advantage of a tight labor market to pursue new ventures and hold on to their jobs, just in case.

  Enter the side startup.

  Last year, more Americans than ever started their own businesses, and 2022 is projected to set another record. At the same time, the national unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. According to research shared with Recode, the share of small business and startup founders who work for someone else has ticked up from 38 percent before the pandemic to 42 percent since the pandemic began, according to a survey of microbusinesses by Venture Forward, a research initiative by GoDaddy. Early-stage investor Thomas DelVecchio told Recode that a majority of the funding requests he’s getting these days are from startup founders with full-time jobs, which was rarely the case pre-pandemic. At the same time, venture capital funding is drying up, so founders are less likely to get checks that would relieve them from their day jobs.

  The rise in side startups coincides with remote work becoming more mainstream during the pandemic. Even though many offices have opened back up, 30 percent of all American workers have hybrid arrangements that allow them to work from home some of the time, while another 15 percent work from home full time, according to June data from WFH Research. Stanford professor and WFH Research co-founder Nicholas Bloom, who is constantly in conversation with corporations about their future of work plans, estimates levels of remote work to stick around present levels of 45 percent working from home at least some of the time.

  Some employers sanction their employees’ startups, or they’re at least willing to look the other way. Others worry that side projects like these could eat into the employee’s productivity or that employees’ extra energy could have gone to their full-time jobs. The situation also brings up thornier questions like who owns a worker’s time and intellectual property. Still, the tight labor market means employers don’t want to lose their highest performers — and ambitious startup founders often fit this description — by being too strict.

  At face value, this trend might look like the latest version of side hustles, which have been a thing forever. People have been picking up freelance projects, driving Ubers, or selling crafts on Etsy as a way to make extra cash and nurse their creativity for years. But having a side startup is different because people are creating full-fledged businesses that are meant to supplant their main job. The current trend is also distinct from being over-employed, a situation in which remote workers secretly take on two full-time jobs for someone else. Their goal is two paychecks for one 40-hour work week and to get back at what they think is an unfair system.

  Recode recently spoke to 10 founders who are starting startups while working remotely full time to learn how they’re doing it and why. A number of them asked to keep their names, employers, and startups anonymous in order to avoid endangering their jobs.

  To many of the people we spoke with, a side startup isn’t just about earning extra cash. It’s about pursuing something they’re passionate about, doing it their own way, and eventually leaving their bosses to become the boss themselves. And while people have always worked nights and weekends to start their own businesses, remote work gives them more time and flexibility to do so and a better hedge against failure.

  Remote work makes side startups much more possible

  Starting your own business while working full time was certainly possible before the pandemic, but the rise of remote work has made this scenario more attainable for more people. Importantly, remote work provides workers some distance from their managers.

  Amanda Northrop/Vox

  “It’s logical that people would be exploring ideas that maybe they couldn’t explore when they thought that their boss was standing over their shoulder,” a person working remotely at a startup accelerator told Recode. During the hours formerly spent commuting, getting lunch, and killing time, this year he and a co-founder have also been working on building a sports app. They both have full-time jobs that are their main priority, but if it works out, the accelerator manager would love to work on the startup exclusively.

  He, like many of the people we spoke with, believes remote work has given him and his co-founder time and space to do both their day jobs and their side startups — and they believe they’re doing so without sacrificing the quality and quantity of work they’re doing for their employer. Indeed, a number of people said they’ve been promoted while working on both.

  Doing both, they reason, can be a win-win situation because the employer gets to keep their hardworking employees while the employees get to work on their dreams without forfeiting economic security.

  That outlook makes more sense now than it did a few years ago. If a pandemic in which millions of people have died has done one thing, it’s made people reconsider their lives. Founders have been able to redirect the extra time remote work affords toward their startups, which they often consider to be a passion project.

  From nine to five, Kaitlyn Borysiewicz is a communications manager at a nonprofit, which offers her financial security. But otherwise, she spends her time on The Melanin Collective, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm that aims to help improve the workplace for women and gender-non-conforming people of color.

  “This is the work that I love to do,” Borysiewicz said. “The community-building aspect of this work is what I live and breathe for.”

  She added that she has approval from her employer and only works on the side startup outside of work hours. In some ways, Borysiewicz sees the situation of working a job and starting a new business as a way for someone in her age group to make up for what they don’t have in other areas of their lives.

  “With the confluence of the pandemic, the lack of affordable housing, inflation, global crises, people, particularly people in my generation, millennials, we aren’t guaranteed the same things that our parents had anymore,” Borysiewicz said. “So we kind of demand more of our workplaces.”

  That includes wanting equality at work for women and people of color, better health care, and benefits, as well as more latitude from employers for employees to bring their whole selves to work. Women and people of color are more likely to want to work remotely than their white male counterparts because it allows them to do their outsized share of home labor and frees them from many office microaggressions. Now, remote work is enabling them to start their own businesses.

  Renegotiating an unfair transaction

  For some, working remotely has pointed out huge problems with traditional office work. Many workers, especially those who are able to work well quickly, have had to justify being in an office for 40-plus hours a week, which is not the same as working 40 hours. The physical and psychological distance from the office in remote work arrangements has helped clarify the transactional nature of employment: You’re paid a certain amount to do a certain amount of work, not spend a certain amount of time sitting in an office.

  Rather than waiting out the clock pretending to work, side startup founders say they’re using their days more efficiently by working remotely.

  A director at a pharmaceutical company said that since working remotely, he’s been able to do better work at his normal job, spend more time with his family, and help secretly found a Web3 consulting company.

  “My day starts at 6 am. Technically, if I’ve been on the computer for eight hours, I’m done by 2 pm — and that assumes I have enough work to fill the full eight hours,” he said. “For years, I had to spend hours every day coming up with extra stuff to do, just to keep busy.”

  The pharmaceutical director sees the extra time as his to spend. To him, the idea that an employer owns your eight hours is disingenuous. That employer decided what was enough work for an eight-hour day and what that was worth in terms of salary. He added that when he goes above and beyond what’s asked of him and puts in extra hours, that doesn’t come with extra pay.

  An unsettling example of the transactional nature of work, the pharmaceutical director explained, came around the birth of each of his three children. Each time, he said that he was in line for a promotion that he was sure he’d get, and his employer used that as a bargaining chip.

  “Every time, the first question they ask you is, ‘So I know the kid is coming soon, how much time are you planning to take off?’ I go, ‘I don’t know, a week I guess?’ when my answer should be a month at least, and they go, ‘Great, we’d love to offer you the role.’ You can tell it’s contingent,” he said.

  This is one of countless examples of employers squeezing as much labor out of employees as possible, without consideration for their well-being. It’s also why many founders don’t feel bad about taking back some of their time to pursue their side startups.

  If it’s going to be a transaction, they figure, it may as well be a fair one.

  To tell the boss or not to tell

  While some people told us they’ve been open with their employers about their startups, others said they either minimized the extent to which they worked on them or were too afraid to tell their bosses anything.

  For those who chose not to tell their employers, it was typically out of a sense of self-preservation rather than feeling like they’re doing something wrong. A marketing director at an e-commerce company who’s been working on an HR company on the side told us he can’t count the number of times he Googled questions like, ‘Should you be honest with your current employer?’ or, ‘How long should you stick with your full-time job until you can go full time with the startup?’

  In the end, the marketing director opted not to tell his employer, fearing his employer would wrongfully doubt his focus and productivity. He’s now been working on his startup for two years and even switched full-time jobs earlier this year hoping to have marginally more free time to work on his own company. And because he doesn’t have savings from a giant tech salary or family wealth behind him, he sees continuing to work full-time as the only way to build his business.

  “To work on a startup without a steady income is just batshit crazy, honestly,” he said. “The pandemic has shown that you can’t put all your eggs in one basket or rely on your corporate employers to provide for you.”

  Many side startup founders were quick to point out that their jobs could fire them at any point, regardless of how loyal they’ve been or how much work they’ve put in.

  “I don’t feel bad at all because I give my full-time job eight or nine or sometimes more hours of work a day,” said one software engineer who’s building his own subscription financial metrics and visualization website for retail investors. That’s been especially possible as a global pandemic has curtailed some of his other pastimes like playing sports and poker. “There’s no guilt there.”

  Instead, the 46-year-old views his side startup as a “ticket out of the hourly grind” and a way to hedge in an industry he fears will try to outsource his work or give it to someone younger and less expensive.

  Other side startup founders expressed a similar sentiment. Developing their own business allows them to be self-sufficient. And if it takes a steady paycheck to get there, so be it.

  How the other side feels

  Of course, there’s a reason why most of the founders we spoke to have kept their startups secret: Their potential investors and bosses aren’t necessarily going to be as happy about their multitasking as they are.

  For some employers, the idea of an employee having a side startup is especially troubling since they already have so many fears about keeping tabs on employees in a remote environment.

  A person who works in leadership at a software company said that, since the advent of remote work, he’s seen both an employee and another person in leadership working on their own businesses on the side. He asked to be anonymous because he isn’t authorized to speak for his company and didn’t want to upset his co-workers. When he approached the employee’s manager about why it was taking so long for the normally very talented person to finish a project, he found out the person was also running a clothing company and a popular food Instagram account.

  “As a manager, it sucks. As someone who’s a proponent of people being on their career journeys and really discovering who they are and what they want to be, I applaud it,” he said. “But at the same time, I’m like, ‘I’ve got shit to do.’”

  Managers fear that the trend writ large could have far-reaching effects on productivity and innovation at companies generally, and that they may have to hire two people to do the same job one used to do.

  So why not just fire employees running side startups? Some of these startup founders are also very good at their full-time jobs, even when distracted. Additionally, amid the Great Resignation, it has been harder and harder to fill jobs when people leave. And having to find a replacement or operating with fewer workers is expensive and time-consuming for the company. Many bosses are loath to let these founders go, especially if they’re high performers.

  Chinwe Onyeagoro, CEO and founder of PocketSuite, sees working on a startup as a good thing for her employees and for her business. PocketSuite is a business app for solo entrepreneurs and small business owners, many of whom also have their own full-time employment.

  “If you think about the Michelangelos of the world, they were not single-function players,” she said. “Somebody who’s a founder and innovator has a lot of ideas and wants to apply themselves in a few different ways. Your best people are going to show up that way.”

  As a way of attracting and retaining such people, Onyeagoro is encouraging her own workers to follow their entrepreneurial dreams and hiring people who are already doing so. She doesn’t see it as losing time, especially since the company has gone fully remote and her employees have flexibility on when to work. As long as they’re hitting their deadlines, keeping these people is a no-brainer.

  In some ways, this wave of remote entrepreneurs is taking advantage of a singular opportunity. They’re using employment to write employment out of the equation.

  As offices reopen and the worst pandemic restrictions subside — and as fears of a recession rise — this window for entrepreneurs will grow smaller, but it’s unlikely to close. Many of the underlying reasons for the tight labor market, like an aging workforce and poor child care infrastructure, aren’t going away.

  Remote work also is not going away. Firms are offering remote work as a way to make up for wages that aren’t rising as fast as inflation and are having to continue to do so to stay competitive with their competitors.

  So far, there doesn’t appear to be a recession in hiring. Even if there is a recession, that does not necessarily mean companies will revoke remote work. Experts we spoke with thought it was possible a recession could lead to more remote work as companies downsize office leases to save money. More remote work could lead to more employees finding new uses for their extra time. And that might mean happier workers all around.

From The Hindu: Sports

• I am ready to clash with Nikhat Zareen for a spot in 50kg boxing at Paris Olympics, says Nitu Ghanghas - On her Birmingham showing, Nitu said, “Winning the gold medal on my Commonwealth Games debut was special.”

• Arjun Tendulkar seeks NoC from Mumbai, likely to play for Goa next season - Arjun Tendulkar has recently been a part of Mumbai Indians' developmental squad that played a lot of T20 games in England.

• Trevalius, Peridot and Absara Star shine -

• Jayawardene picks Babar Azam as player who can dethrone Joe Root as top Test batter - Jayawardene said he was most impressed by the amount of time Babar Azam has spent while at the crease.

• Morning Digest | Centre releases ₹1.16 lakh crore to States to boost spending; Last-minute flights likely to get cheaper, and more - A select list of stories to read before you start your day

From The Hindu: National News

• Panchayat to correct dangerous curve at Puthiyapuram in Kozhikode - Local body makes an effort following SHRC rap

• Coffee plantations covered by heaps of soil at Donigal - Negligence of road construction company on NH 75 blamed for the incident

• Yadgir farmers shift pump sets to safer places as KBJNL increases discharge of water from Basavasagar reservoir to Krishna river in north Karnataka - Agriculture fields downstream of the reservoir in Yadgir district are facing a flood-like situation

• Andhra Pradesh: Bhoomi puja for Venkateswara temple at Navi Mumbai on August 21 - Maharashtra government has allotted 10 acres for the shrine at Ulwe

• Income tax payers barred from enrolling in Atal Pension Yojana from Oct 1 - The government introduced APY on June 1, 2015, to provide social security to workers mainly in the unorganised sector

From BBC: Europe

• France firefighters battle ‘monster’ wildfire near Bordeaux - The blaze in France’s south-west has gutted a number of homes and forced some 10,000 people to flee.

• Ukraine war: Crimea airbase badly damaged, satellite images show - New pictures show extensive damage to buildings and warplanes after explosions hit the Russian base.

• Zaporizhzhia: Russia must exit Ukraine nuclear plant, says G7 - Moscow’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia site puts the entire region in danger, say foreign ministers.

• Ryanair boss O’Leary says the era of €10 flights is over - Flights will be more expensive because war in Ukraine has pushed up oil prices, Michael O’Leary tells the BBC.

• Ex-inmates reveal details of Russia prison rape scandal - Former prisoners expose how and why rape is being used as a weapon inside Russian jails.

From Ars Technica

• New tragic details of US child who died from tropical bacteria in room spray - The healthy boy died a week after falling ill with the tricky-to-diagnose infection. - link

• PlayStation Plus’ highest tier slams to an apparent halt on classic games - After service’s June revision, we review how poorly its “classic” library is going. - link

• Amazon begins large-scale rollout of palm print-based payments - The technology has drawn scrutiny from privacy activists and politicians. - link

• Were bones of Waterloo soldiers sold as fertilizer? It’s not yet case closed - Visitor accounts, artwork describe exact locations of three mass graves - link

• FCC cancels Starlink’s $886 million grant from Ajit Pai’s mismanaged auction - FCC: “Nascent” Starlink tech has capacity limits, may not deliver required speed. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• My 12 year old just told me a joke -

  He said “I’ve been trying to cut down the amount of video games I play, I’m only playing for 30 minutes before I go to bed. Last night I went to bed 8 times.”

  submitted by /u/HMWWaWChChIaWChCChW
  [link] [comments]

• A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question. -

  The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath, and stopped inches from a shop window.

  For a second, everything was quiet in the cab. Then the driver said, “Look, mate, don’t ever do that again. You scared the living daylights out of me!”

  The passenger apologized and said, “I didn’t realize that a little tap would scare you so much.”

  The driver replied, “Sorry, it’s not really your fault. Today is my first day as a cab driver — I’ve been driving a funeral van for the last 25 years.”

  submitted by /u/soveranol
  [link] [comments]

• I taught my kids about democracy tonight by having them vote on what movie to watch and pizza to order -

  And then I picked the movie and pizza I wanted because I’m the one with the money.

  submitted by /u/lardparty
  [link] [comments]

• Why are diversity officers in progressive companies always women? -

  Because it is cheaper.

  submitted by /u/MrDagon007
  [link] [comments]

• A man walks into a Mexican book store and asks, “Do you have the book on Donald Trump’s foreign policies with Mexico?” -

  The clerk replies, “Fuck you, get out of here, and stay out!”

  The man replies, “Yeah, that’s the one!”

  submitted by /u/ChampionOfChaos
  [link] [comments]