Loose Ends (95)

Busy road trip this week with lots of meetings (and great podcast interviews for coming weeks!), so I’m behind on the news. Trump say anything yesterday? I should think I would have heard something.

Herewith a few odds and ends:

Covering (I guess?) the important issues:

Why Are Fewer French Women Sunbathing Topless?

I can think of several theories, but let’s go to the reporting:

In 1984, a survey found that 43 percent of Frenchwomen bathed topless on the beach. But a similar poll last month revealed that figure had fallen to 19 percent. Of 1,000 women interviewed, 59 percent of under-25s said they covered their breasts in order not to arouse men, while 51 percent said they were scared of being physically or sexually abused if they went topless. Other reasons stated were a fear of skin cancer, and a lack of self-confidence about their bodies.

Someone actually takes polls and surveys on this vital issue? I would think this topic requires lots of on-the-scene field research. That’s how John would do it I think?

Occam’s Razor, meet the razor blade industry: Procter & Gamble, owners of the Gillette razor franchise, recently took a $8 billion—billion with a B—write-down on its Gillette division in the wake of its woke marketing campaign. Couldn’t happen to a dumber company. (I sold my P&G stock when this idiocy began. It was trending to overvalue territory anyway.)

Now Gillette is backtracking, at least in Australia:

Razor brand Gillette says it is “shifting the spotlight from social issues to local heroes” after an ad delving into “toxic masculinity” caused a customer backlash. . .

“We have a very clear strategy when it comes to how we authentically connect with our consumers,” said Manu Airan, associate brand director for Gillette Australia and New Zealand.

“We will continue to talk about what is important to Gillette and that is representing men at their best and helping men do their best. That is not changing. We will continue to do that and demonstrate it in different ways.”

Parent company P&G last month took a nearly $12 billion ($US8 billion) writedown in the value of the 118-year-old shaving business it purchased in 2005 for $84 billion ($US57 billion).

As Glenn Reynolds like to say, “Get woke, go broke.” P&G won’t go broke, but the $8 billion write-off is a nice comeuppance.

I blame climate change, or George W. Bush, or Trump, or racism and white supremacy, or something:

Earth’s Inner Core Is Doing Something Weird

Surface-dwellers know that Earth spins on its axis once about every 24 hours. But the inner core is a roughly moon-size ball of iron floating within an ocean of molten metal, which means it is free to turn independently from our planet’s large-scale spin, a phenomenon known as super-rotation. And how fast it’s going has been hotly debated. . .

John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California, now has the latest estimate for this rate. In a recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters, he reports that the inner core likely inches along just faster than Earth’s surface. If his rate’s right, it means that if you stood on a spot at the Equator for one year, the part of the inner core that was previously beneath you would wind up under a spot 4.8 miles away.

Another reason to cut greenhouse gas emissions I’m sure.

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