Six-Chart Sunday (#4)
6 Infographics from the week + 1 interview (Admiral Bill McRaven on Leadership)
1. Best of Times, Worst of Times (from The Times): Unprecedented split between competing consumer confidence measures suggests satisfaction with the business & labor picture and dissatisfaction with inflation’s impact on people’s pocketbooks.
Arsenal of Autocracy: “More than half of the world’s commercial shipbuilding output came from China last year, making it the top global ship maker by a wide margin. The once-prolific shipyards of the West that helped forge empires, expand trade and win wars have shriveled.” (WSJ)
The AI Hype Cycle May Be Slowing Down: Fewer mentions of AI / ML / Gen AI in more recent earnings calls, but may soar again after Sora (insane new text to video generator just released by OpenAI).
ESG wars dividing states: Businesses are caught between red state backlash vs ESG and blue states’ pedal to the metal (of an EV, one assumes).
Bad Exceptionalism: “Sometime around 2009, American roads started to become deadlier for pedestrians, particularly at night. Nothing resembling this pattern has occurred in other comparably wealthy countries.” (NYT)
That Kind of Year: What could be more “2024” than a 269-269 Electoral College tie? Here’s how it could go down…
VIDEO
Admiral Bill McRaven, the commander who got Bin Laden, discussions timeless leadership lessons:
The chart showing the increase in U.S. pedestrian deaths doesn’t seem such a mystery to me. It seems to correlate pretty well to the increase of people living on the street. A significant portion of the homeless population is some combination of drug impaired, mentally disturbed, or otherwise socially defiant. They don’t confine themselves to well-lit crosswalks and seem to assert their pedestrian right-of-way as a general F.U. to the motoring public, or just lack situational awareness. It often does not go well, especially at night.