Starbucks baristas are oppressed by TikTok Frappuccinos

APRIL 8, 2022
STAFF

Most coffee shops have customers who drop in occasionally and Starbucks has a boss who does the same. Howard Schultz started his third stint in 35 years as chief executive this week with a pledge to restore the heart of a global chain that grew from one café in Seattle.

“We are longing for love, to be embraced, to be valued, to be cared for . . . Over a cup of coffee, we bring people together,” he told a gathering of employees, many of whom are feeling unloved themselves. His first act was to suspend share buybacks and attempt to quell discontent that has led to baristas at several US stores joining a union.

His vision of Starbucks cafés as comforting “third places” beyond home and work, at which locals can gather to chat over coffee prepared by passionate experts, is familiar. He said something similar last time he took back control, in 2008. Even Schultz admits that his platonic ideal has “kind of been dissipated in the last few years”.

Some of the pressures it faces are common to other businesses. Supply chains are stretched, and raw material prices are rising. Many US companies are struggling to recruit and retain staff after the “great resignation” of the pandemic. Discontented employees want better pay and conditions: Amazon workers at a New York warehouse voted to unionise last week.

But Starbucks has a problem of its own concoction among its staff. Ray Oldenburg, the sociologist who popularised the notion of the “third place”, lauded cafés and hostelries for easing “the atomisation of life” in urban America. The burden on today’s baristas is the atomisation of the Frappuccino.

One of these blended iced drinks became notorious last year when Starbucks fired a barista for tweeting an image of the “Edward”, named after the customer for whom he had to mix it. The Venti Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino with 13 modifiers (Starbucks’ term for additions) included five bananas, seven pumps of caramel sauce and extra cinnamon dolce topping.

The Edward is a Frankenstein’s monster of mass customisation but it is not unique. In Schultz’s mind, baristas may work in cafés crafting their espresso crema. In reality, they are often at drive-through stations, pumping extra shots of syrup and cream into White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccinos.

There are 170,000 ways to customise drinks at Starbucks stores, including all the multicoloured, off-menu blends that Gen Z customers request before posting videos on TikTok. Flavour diversity has been made easier by the Starbucks mobile app, which allows customers to pre-order crazy combinations to pick up, without having to face a resentful barista in person.

Frappuccinos have been around since 1995, during Shultz’s initial tenure as CEO, but have proliferated in recent years. Cold drinks, including cold brew coffee, iced lattes and Frappuccinos, accounted for 70 per cent of US sales last year, up from half in 2018.

That is deliberate. Schultz last retook the helm amid the coffee wars of the mid-2000s with McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, when Starbucks was being undercut by cheaper cappuccinos. Since then, it has regained its premium — and grown around the world to 34,000 outlets — by offering higher priced, individual beverages.

Starbucks has changed in another way. The pandemic shift to working from home and population movement to suburbs mean that many Americans no longer linger in city centre stores, such as its original café in Pike Place Market, Seattle. They are more likely to grab a frothy drink at a drive-through.

The company has closed 420 US stores and is opening new drive-throughs and walk-by “pick-ups” for pre-ordered drinks: 45 per cent of outlets will be in such formats by next year. These are designed to satisfy individual consumer preferences, but communal third places they are not.

Nor is this a recipe for employee happiness: it all tends to make the barista’s job more stressful and less fulfilling. Many complain of overwork from having to juggle a flow of digital and in-person orders, while blending ever more fancy Frappuccinos. The personal touch is reduced to hailing customers through windows, or on screens.

Schultz is going on a listening tour to restore “kindness and joy” to his alienated baristas. I suspect he will hear that they feel like the face of a machine, with the artificial intelligence software in its mobile app advising customers digitally while they provide a thin layer of humanity at the front end.

Starbucks has historically been a good employer. It stood out among quick-service chains in offering its staff healthcare, educational and parental benefits, as well as share ownership. It has increased hourly wages to an average of $17 in the face of the union drive, and Schultz this week promised to “do better for our partners”.

But the discontent goes deeper than money. BMW has called time on letting buyers endlessly customise their cars, and I advise Schultz to do the same for Frappuccinos. Otherwise, no matter how sweet the vision, his baristas will not feel cared for.

john.gapper@ft.com

Peru's economy still weighed down by mining woes -cenbank official

Fri, April 8, 2022

By Carolina Pulice

April 8 (Reuters) - Peru's economy is still being weighed down by protests hitting copper mines including MMG's Las Bambas and Southern Copper Corp's Cuajone, a central bank official said on Friday.

"(Production) problems remain, affecting the evolution of mining GDP," said Adrian Armas, the bank's manager of economic studies.

On Thursday, the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 4.5% from 4.0%, citing inflationary pressures.

Armas said the bank expected inflation to start falling from July, reaching its target range of 1%-3% in the second or third quarter of next year.

Peru is the world's No. 2 copper producer and mining is a key source of tax revenue.

The country is facing a wave of protests from indigenous communities that accuse mining firms of not providing enough jobs and money to impoverished locals.

Las Bambas alone accounts for about 1% of gross domestic product and 2% of global copper supply.

While missing out on tax revenues at a time when copper prices are at near-record highs, Peru is also facing high inflation and pressures to subsidize costs that have spiked since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It has already waived most taxes on gasoline and food essentials, as well as given vouchers to poor families to buy cooking gas.

(Reporting by Carolina Pulice; editing by John Stonestreet)

Spain to open idle liquid gas facility as European storage base


Fri, April 8, 2022
By Isla Binnie

MADRID, April 8 (Reuters) - Spain plans to open a never-before-used liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on its northern coast and dedicate it to receiving and re-exporting fuel to other European countries struggling to break their dependence on gas piped from Russia.

Energy and Environment Minister Teresa Ribera told online newspaper El Diario that the El Musel plant would not be connected to the Spanish gas grid but would be used "to give more flexibility to the system".

Russia's invasion of Ukraine - and subsequent demand to be paid in roubles for its gas, which covers 40% of Europe's needs - has sent the European Union searching for other ways to power its industries and households.

One alternative to gas pumped through pipelines is LNG, which is more expensive and sold on competitive international markets.

El Musel has the capacity to store 300,000 cubic metres of chilled, concentrated gas, and could process roughly 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas that can be used by industry and households every year, Enagas said.

Total Russian supplies to Europe last year were around 155 bcm, a figure Brussels wants to slash by two thirds this year.

The EU has agreed to jointly purchase gas and the United States has promised to increase LNG exports, but major producer Qatar has warned that no single country can replace Russian supplies.

The Spanish project is the latest of several - the Netherlands is looking at building more import facilities, and Germany has revived three LNG projects since the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Siberia was abandoned.

Enagas will send a proposal to the market regulator in the next few days, a spokesperson said.

This would allow the plant, originally intended to feed generation facilities that were never built, to start operating around the end of this year at the earliest, El Diario said.

Spain has six functioning LNG terminals, but has limited pipeline capacity to pump it north to the continent's major consumers. National oil and gas agency CORES said on Friday it had in February registered the first delivery of LNG to Britain from Spain since 2010. (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by David Holmes)

The Chip Sector Has a New Worry in Plant Shutdown for Key Manufacturing Chemical



PFAS chemicals are used in the etching process for chip manufacturing.

The fragile semiconductor supply chain has one more thing to worry about.

Chips have been relatively scarce throughout the pandemic, with Covid-19 periodically triggering plant shutdowns, and demand soaring along with sales of PCs, smartphones, electric vehicles, and other electronic goods. The market has recently been worried about a shortage of neon and other rare gases used in chipmaking, triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


This time, the issue involves a class of chemical called PFAS, an acronym for “perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances.” Semiconductor manufacturers use PFAS as coolants in the etching process, a crucial step in chip production.

The vast majority of semiconductor-grade PFAS is produced by 3M (ticker: MMM), primarily at a plant in Zwijndrecht, Belgium. Recently, 3M’s plant there has stopped PFAS production to implement emissions controls that have been demanded by the Belgian government.

On March 30, 3M announced plans to invest €150 million (equal to about $163 million) “to proactively advance remedial actions for the Zwijndrecht community to address legacy manufacturing and disposal” of PFAS. “3M has engineered and activated a wastewater treatment system that has helped significantly reduce PFAS discharges from its site in Zwijndrecht, while continuing to work with relevant authorities to resolve the wastewater discharge permit modification issues that impact the facility’s operations,” it said.

In a statement this week, 3M told Barron’s that “the timeline to resolve the situation is uncertain and, in several aspects, not in 3M’s control. We have communicated with our customers about the potential for disruption.”

In a research note this week on the issue, the supply-chain monitoring company Resilinc noted that 3M accounts for 90% of the global supply of coolant for the chip industry, saying 80% of that comes from the single plant in Belgium, while the rest is produced in the U.S. The remaining 10% of global supply comes from Solvay, a Belgian chemical company that produces the material in a plant in Italy, Resilinc said.

Resilinc reported that 3M sells the coolants under the brand names Fluorinert and Novec. Customers for PFAS include companies with substantial chipmaking operations, like Intel, Micron, SK Hynix,Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor, among others.

In response to a query from Barron’s, Intel said it was keep close tabs on the issue. “Intel has assessed the possible impact of the coolant production halt at the 3M Belgium facility on its supply chain,” the company said in a statement. “While we work with 3M regarding coolant supply and their restart strategy, we do not foresee immediate disruption to our operations. However, we are monitoring the situation carefully and working with our suppliers closely to mitigate our risks.”

Likewise, SK Hynix said it “expects to utilize the remaining inventory for short- to mid-term usage. We’re considering plans to diversify our sources of coolant material in case this situation becomes a long-term issue, and will ensure no disruption occurring to our production.”

Micron has a similar position. “We do not expect any negative impact to our near-term production volumes, but this is a dynamic situation, and we remain vigilant,” Micron said in response to a query from Barron’s. “We are taking steps to secure additional supply for a longer period. We are focused on ensuring continuity of supply for our customers.”

Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the 3M issue.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com

Transport stocks keep falling as analyst says a freight recession is ‘likely inevitable’

Last Updated: April 9, 2022 at 9:22 a.m. ETFirst Published: April 8, 2022 at 1:41 p.m. ET
By

Tomi Kilgore

BofA downgraded 9 transport stocks including UPS, which suffered an 8th-straight decline

Wall Street’s recent disdain for the transportation sector continued on Friday, as analysts expressed concerns over “rapidly” deteriorating market conditions and a growing risk of a freight recession.

BofA Securities analyst Ken Hoexter downgraded nine transport stocks on Friday, including two double downgrades. J.P. Morgan’s Brian Ossenbeck actually upgraded one stock, but slashed his stock price targets on more than a dozen others.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average DJT sank 0.9% to close at 14,470.72 on Friday, a day after it bounced 0.3% to snap a six-day losing streak, the longest such streak in more than two years. The Dow transports have tumbled 13.4% over the past eight sessions, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, which jumped 137.55 points, or 0.4% on Friday, has eased just 1.6% the past eight days.

Also read: Dow transports selloff may be warning of something more than just a macro speed bump.

“The risk of a freight recession is rising and likely inevitable for an industry where capacity additions always overshoot demand and rates are still near all-time highs.”— J.P. Morgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck

After such a steep drop in the sector, J.P. Morgan’s Ossenbeck said many investors have asked about how much downside was left, and what looks attractive after the selloff, but he recommended it’s still better to cut bait than to bottom fish.

“Overall, we didn’t find much conviction in bottom-fishing at this point based on our conversations, despite the significant drop over the last two weeks,” Ossenbeck wrote in a research note.

FACTSET, MARKETWATCH

BofA’s Hoexter said he downgraded about a third of the stocks he covers given “deteriorating demand outlooks and rapidly falling freight rates.” He wrote in a note to clients that freight market signals have turned “increasingly softer” amid signs that demand is waning, and not because of increased capacity.

Among those downgraded, shares of package-delivery giant United Parcel Service Inc. UPS slumped 0.9%, and has dropped 14.2% during an eight-day losing streak.

Hoexter cut his rating to neutral from buy and reduced his price target to $204 from $243, citing a consumer growth outlook that is “coming under increasing pressure.” While UPS was seeing increased pricing potential amid improving industry surcharges, it was also experiencing a “decelerating pace” of volume growth, Hoexter wrote.

He also downgraded Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. CP CA:CP, Union Pacific Corp. UNP, Saia Inc. SAIA, TFI International Inc. TFII CA:TFII and ArcBest Corp. ARCB to neutral from buy, and cut his rating on Werner Enterprises Inc. WERN to underperform from neutral.

For Schneider National Inc. SNDR and Triton International Ltd. TRTN, Hoexter swung to underperform from buy.

JPMorgan’s Ossenbeck said he cut price targets and earnings estimates on multiple transports stocks because “truckload market conditions rapidly deteriorated in the back half of March.”

While fundamentals were “bad” and recent hawkish comments by the Federal Reserve haven’t helped, his concerns were more about “the limited guardrails ahead as the consumer weakens and inventory re-stocking ends.”

“The risk of a freight recession is rising and likely inevitable for an industry where capacity additions always overshoot demand and rates are still near all-time highs,” Ossenbeck wrote in a research note.

He cut his price targets on 14 stocks, including UPS’s target to $229 from $262. However, he upgraded C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. CHRW to overweight from neutral and raised his price target to $117 from $92, and also listed his price target on Union Pacific Corp.’s stock UNP to $276 from $267.

For C.H. Robinson, Ossenbeck said the company could take market share in a down freight market and expand margins, as it had repriced more than half its contracts just before rates dropped and had already announced a big increase in its workforce for 2022.

Ukrainians Are Risking Their Lives To Save Animals

The rescues have saved scores of pets and zoo animals left behind in the chaos of war.

Karla Zabludovsky

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on April 8, 2022

Valentina Stoyanov  with some of the dogs she and her husband have rescued.

With bags of dog and cat food piled in the back of her van and her petite body cloaked in an oversize bulletproof vest, Valentina Stoyanov was ready to feed hundreds of animals. Or to be shot at.

“A very difficult day for us,” Valentina says in a video posted to the Instagram account she shares with her husband, Leonid, also a Ukrainian veterinarian.

The two had spent the last 41 days saving hundreds of animals: Casper, a blind Husky whose owner had gone to the front lines of Russia’s invasion; flocks of birds who survived a bombing at the market where they were kept; turtles, snakes, geckos, rats, chinchillas, rabbits, and hedgehogs.

They had collected some of the animals from locked apartments they visited with the police, left behind by owners who hadn't had time to get the paperwork needed for the pets to enter neighboring countries. They found others roaming the streets. A few, Valentina said, were “thrown under the doors of our clinic” in Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered everything in its path, not only killing some 1,417 civilians and forcing more than 4.2 million people out of the country, but also wreaking havoc on beloved pets and other animals who do not understand why the night sky is now punctured by bright explosions, loud booms are followed by the thunderous sound of crumbling buildings, and human companions have vanished.

As the war has intensified, so have efforts to save animals. The Stoyanovs are part of a growing network that delivers food to shelters under fire and carries out complex transfers of animals within and outside of the country. Groups of volunteers across Ukraine stay in touch regularly, often using social media to ask for, or offer, help. In many cases, the answers have come from as far as Spain.

But the work comes at a heavy cost: Some of the earliest victims of the war were Anastasiia Yalanskaya and two other volunteers en route to deliver food to an animal shelter. At Feldman Ecopark, a zoo in Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine, three employees have been killed, one was injured, and two have disappeared.

In Valentina’s videos, the highway they are driving on appears empty. Mustering a half-smile, Valentina looks into the camera. “Wish us luck!” she writes in the clip.


Iryna  Lapatina's dog Bike


Last month, when Russian tanks entered Stoyanka-2, a small settlement outside of the capital city of Kyiv, Iryna Lapatina had to flee her home in a rush, leaving behind her three dogs. Some of her neighbors had decided to stay in the village and promised her they would stop by with food whenever possible.

Shortly before the invasion, Bike, her 9-year-old Bordeaux Mastiff, had been diagnosed with cancer. The vet had prescribed him a treatment that was likely to keep him alive for several months and that included painkillers.

Anastasiia Lapatina, Iryna’s daughter, anxiously waited in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, growing concerned over reports of ongoing heavy fighting in her hometown. By the time the Russian forces were repelled and someone was able to go check on the dogs, some 20 days later, Bike was so weak he couldn’t stand up. The other two were healthy.

The neighbor immediately told Iryna the good news. But the elation lasted only a few hours: Bike died before she could return home.

“Rest in peace, my beautiful angel,” wrote Anastasiia, a reporter for the Kyiv Independent, on Twitter. “They will pay for making your last few weeks hell.”

Like many other Ukrainians who have lost their pets, Anastasiia will have to move on without the support of an animal, which experts say often helps emotional recoveries.

“Across cultures, companion animals are an integral part of our lives, in good times, and, perhaps even more so, in bad times,” José Arce, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

Anastasiia said Bike would have been buried with the family's late dogs in the forest near their home, but the Russians had placed mines throughout it. Instead, she said, he was buried in a black body bag, far from his family “in the middle of nowhere.”

The evacuations were stealth: 

First, there were the eight kangaroos, whose enclosures had been repeatedly shelled. Then, the three tapirs — Dalma, Pinto, and Dolly — who swayed in the back of a van as they were rushed away. Days later, it was the lions, thrashing in their cages as they were ushered into wooden boxes aboard a cargo truck.

But the rescue efforts have come too late for many of Feldman Ecopark’s 5,000 animals. More than 100 have been confirmed dead, including an adult chimpanzee, two young female orangutans, a male mandrill, a couple of bison, deer, alpacas, ostriches, and several kangaroos, according to Alexander Feldman, the park’s founder.

Some died from ammunition explosions, but others have been killed by stress. Primates have suffered deadly heart attacks, reptiles have frozen to death following electricity disruptions, and, gripped by panic, several animals have crashed into the fences of their enclosures, Feldman said.

The park, which provided “social psychological assistance to children with special needs,” according to its website, has been at the forefront of the war since it began on Feb. 24. “Bullets, mines, shells, bombs, and rockets — anything came,” Feldman told BuzzFeed News in an email.

And yet, volunteers have visited the park almost daily to feed, warm, and evacuate the animals. At least six employees have been killed or injured or have disappeared.

The park, Feldman said, has been effectively destroyed. And the animals that remain trapped need food. Time is of the essence.

“We need a green corridor for animals,” he wrote.

Instagram: @vet.crew
There aren’t many moments of quiet at Vet Crew, the Stoyanovs' clinic.

Chirps, croaks, barks, and meows fill its seven rooms during daylight. Explosions pierce it at night.

This wasn’t how Valentina and Leonid, 28 and 34, respectively, thought 2022 would sound like. Before the invasion, they were in the midst of creating the “Wild Area,” a project where animals rescued from petting zoos and circuses would be housed in enclosures as similar to wild conditions as possible.

Now, they spend their days feeding their 250 rescues, cleaning out the dozens of cages, and helping more than 20 private shelters for cats and dogs, according to Valentina, who spoke to BuzzFeed via WhatsApp.

Several weeks ago, Tosya, a baby magot who has become an Instagram celebrity thanks to videos of him and Valentina nibbling on fruits together, developed severe diarrhea. His chronic illnesses — gastritis, pancreatitis, and problems with his liver — were being exacerbated by the stress of the explosions heard nearby, Valentina said. He stopped eating and started sleeping whenever bombs weren’t going off.

“Tosya, or rather, his body, is very tired of this,” she wrote on Instagram, “in fact, like us.”

Almost every night, the Stoyanovs post a story on their social media letting their worried followers know they are safe: “We are here and everything is fine with us!” But exhaustion has become visible on their faces. “When such a war has been going on for more than a month and then you have to continue to do your job nonstop, 24/7, that’s when it becomes hard,” Valentina said.

Despite the efforts to protect animals, shelling in some regions has made it impossible to get to them in time. This week, the carcasses of more than 300 dogs were discovered at the Borodyanka shelter outside Kyiv this week — huddled together, some with visibly protruding ribs, others covered in hay. According to UAnimals, an animal charity, they had died of hunger and thirst.

But the network is pressing on.

During their mission to deliver food to the battle-ridden region, the Stoyanovs stopped to give two dogs on the side of the road food and water, describing the landscape as “apocalyptic.” At one point, a projectile exploded near their car, leaving a hole in one of the doors and destroying the houses around them.

Back at home later that night, Valentina lay down to snuggle Tosya. The tiny ape stroked her neck softly as he fiddled with her necklace. Silence, at last.

“Do not worry,” Valentina writes in the final video of the day. “Tosya is the best antidepressant. Ever.”




Karla Zabludovsky is the Mexico bureau chief and Latin America correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in Mexico City.
Contact Karla Zabludovsky at karla.zabludovsky@buzzfeed.com.

US
40% of Crypto Investors Don’t Know They’re Required To Pay Taxes — What Else Are They Forgetting?


Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy
Fri, April 8, 2022, 

LPETTET / Getty Images

The tax filing deadline – April 18 – is looming, but many crypto investors seem to be ill-prepared to file taxes on their earnings, according to a new survey. This knowledge gap can lead to inaccurately filed tax returns, potentially resulting in crypto investors paying too much or too little in tax.

The new survey, by CoinTracker, finds that a staggering 40% of U.S. crypto investors don’t even know paying taxes is required for selling cryptocurrency for fiat currency — and 48% did not know that selling or trading an NFT is a taxable event. More surprisingly, 96% of respondents had not filed their tax returns as of March 27, 2022, possibly because of the widespread confusion surrounding crypto taxes, the survey found.

CoinTracker’s head of tax strategy, Shehan Chandrasekera, told GOBankingRates the fact that 40% of the crypto-investing population didn’t know about the tax obligations when cashing out is surprising. “I would say lack of education and awareness related to crypto taxes are arguably the main contributing factors,” Chandrasekera said.

The survey also found that when it comes to calculating taxes on their cryptocurrency activities, an overwhelming 84% of crypto investors are not completely confident that they know all they need to.

“Cryptocurrency taxes are complicated, and especially trying to do them by hand without the support of crypto tax software is a daunting challenge,” Chandrasekera said. “It’s therefore not surprising that the vast majority of cryptocurrency users are unprepared to file their taxes.”

Given a list of possible cryptocurrency situations that require paying income tax, just 3% of those polled got all answers correct, leaving 97% with at least one wrong answer. For example, 58% don’t realize they need to pay taxes when trading one type of cryptocurrency for another, or when using cryptos to buy a good or service or service (64% of respondents got this latter question wrong).

Chandrasekera explained that one of the most important things for crypto investors to know is that cryptocurrencies are taxed as property by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

“This guidance has been out since 2014. If you have any taxable events, you should report them on your taxes accurately and pay taxes. If you have cryptocurrency losses, you can claim them on your taxes and receive a higher refund in some cases,” Chandrasekera said.

Common Taxable Events Involving Crypto

Common taxable events include: cashing out crypto, crypto-to-crypto trades, spending crypto to buy goods and services, earning crypto (wages, interest, staking, mining income) and crypto airdrops.

In terms of the most common difficulties for crypto investors, it’s that they have a responsibility to reconcile their crypto activity across exchanges and wallets and calculate the correct capital gains or losses.

“This is often a very difficult task to do manually due to various reasons,” Chandrasekera said. “It is virtually impossible for an average taxpayer to keep detailed records of all the data required to file accurate tax forms. To correctly file tax forms, they need to know the purchase date of each coin, sale date of each coin, name and the quantity of each coin they sold, how much they paid for the coin (cost basis) and the market value at the time they sold the coin.”

He added that investors also have to know the right tax rules to apply for somewhat complex crypto transactions such as airdrop, staking or lending.

New Investors Learning About Crypto Taxes

Mark Homza, co-CEO and co-founder of Funday, told GOBankingRates that when it comes to tax planning for cryptocurrencies it’s no different from a capital gains tax on your public equity investments.

“The pandemic increased the volume of retail investors participating in the public market, many of which traded for the first time and had to adapt to new tax implications,” Homza said. ” It’s a learning curve no matter which market you enter for the first time, but there are a few upsides to cryptocurrency investing. In relation to tax implications, while you will be taxed if you transfer your crypto to another or choose to lock in your gains, if you choose to store earned capital on an exchange or in a digital wallet your crypto investment will not be taxed.”

He added that despite tax implications, cryptocurrencies allow a larger volume of the global population to participate in the market — and to access an array of new portfolio diversification opportunities.

See: Crypto Ownership: How Inflation, Regulation and More Led to Meteoric Rise in 2021

“As regulation becomes more clear around cryptocurrencies and new investors begin to familiarize themselves with the nuances of the digital assets space, tax parameters and activities will become far more understood and seamless,” he said.

BULLSHIT JOBS

Help Wanted: Adjunct Professor, Must Have Doctorate. Salary: $0.

Anemona Hartocollis
Sat, April 9, 2022, 

Liza Loza, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., taught a discussion section for which she was not paid. (Neeta Satam/The New York Times)

The job posting for an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, set high expectations for candidates: A Ph.D. in chemistry or biochemistry, a strong teaching record at the college level, and three to five letters of recommendation.

But there was a catch: The job would be on a “without salary basis,” as the posting phrased it. Just to be clear, it hammered home the point: “Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

The posting last month caused an immediate uproar among academics across the country, who accused the university of exploiting already undervalued adjunct professors, and suggested this would never happen in other occupations. Under pressure, UCLA apologized and withdrew the posting.

But the unspoken secret had been fleetingly exposed: Free labor is a fact of academic life.

“These arrangements are common in academia,” Bill Kisliuk, a spokesperson for UCLA, told Inside Higher Ed when at first defending the job posting.

Contingent faculty, the umbrella term for all kinds of generally part-time and untenured college teachers without much if any job security, make up a huge portion of the teaching staff of universities — by some estimates, around 70% overall and more in community colleges.

They have long complained about the long hours and low pay. But these unpaid arrangements are perhaps the most concrete example of the unequal power in a weak labor market — in which hundreds of candidates might apply for one position. Institutions are able to persuade or cajole people who have invested at least five or six years in earning a Ph.D. to work for free, even though, academics said, these jobs rarely lead to a tenure-track position.

“If your theory is that association with UCLA is itself compensation, then it makes sense,” said Trent McDonald, a Ph.D. candidate in English and American literature and union organizer at Washington University in St. Louis. “I think there is the belief that you can eat prestige.”

Very often, adjuncts and other contingent faculty are asked to do unpaid work that is presented not as free labor but as a way to hone their own credentials, according to union activists and some instructors who have received such requests. It may be characterized as professional development or service. Professionals are sometimes willing to teach a class in their field for free so they can put the university affiliation on their business cards, said Joe T. Berry, a former adjunct and historian of contingent faculty.

And the instructors who are pressed into teaching without job security are often women or minorities, who began entering academia in force as the system was shifting to contingent faculty, said Berry, who recently co-wrote a book on the subject called “Power Despite Precarity.”

In a previous book, Berry said, he has a page listing all the terms that have been used for contingent faculty: One of them is “uncompensated.”

The union representing contingent faculty at the University of California has been fighting the uncompensated positions for years, said Mia McIver, the president of the union, which represents about 7,000 members. “The fact that it is common does not excuse it,” she said.

The union suspects that the number of uncompensated teachers at the university is increasing, said McIver, who is also a lecturer in the UCLA writing program. “As of March 2019, we had identified 26 faculty members at UCLA alone,” she said.

In the California system, the trend seemed to have begun with the financial crisis of 2008, McIver said. By 2010, she said, “We became aware of people who had been laid off and who were teaching for free in the hopes, without any commitment from the university, that if the work came back they would be hired back to teach for pay.”

The union won a settlement with the administration in 2016 requiring compensation for lecturers, who are mostly part-time and make up the majority of contingent faculty, McIver said. But while lecturers are now unionized, adjuncts are not, allowing the university to have adjunct positions known as “0% appointments,” meaning that they are unpaid.

A spokesperson for UCLA, Steve Ritea, said that before the settlement, the people who taught for free were often full-time professionals with other income. He said he could not comment on the number of 0% appointments without seeing the documents the union was relying on. But he said that a typical example of a 0% adjunct is a tenured professor at another institution who has a formal affiliation with UCLA that might include mentoring students or serving on committees. Or someone who has moved to another university but wants to finish out a grant or a project.

The job posting “regrettably contained errors and a lack of context,” he said, adding, “We always offer compensation for classroom teaching.”

Even if someone takes a 0% position willingly, the union sees it as a disincentive for the university to create more secure positions.

“From my perspective, it doesn’t matter whether someone had another job or another position, or is a retired professor who wanted to come back and teach, or a refugee scholar who needed a position, or a postdoc doing research who wanted or needed to teach,” McIver said, rattling off possible justifications. “Ultimately, all of that doesn’t matter because anyone who teaches at a university or any school, let alone the University of California, should be paid for their labor.”

Liza Loza, a graduate student in molecular microbiology and microbial pathogenesis at Washington University, was excited to be asked to teach a discussion section about four years ago. She had to do a lot of preparation, spending hours reading very dense scientific papers and anticipating students’ questions.

But she saw the job as her chance to make those discussions more hospitable to women and other students who had been shut out of the hard sciences. She remembered her own experience having professors who were so intimidating that she was afraid to speak, and she wanted to set a counterexample.

She was told that the job was unpaid because it was a professional development opportunity. She says the experience was valuable. “I did get a lot out of it on my CV, but also personally, as something that I wanted to help make better about the program,” she said.

Then last semester, in her third year of teaching the section, she found out by accident that graduate students in other departments were being paid $1,000 for the same work.

“That was for me a bright line,” she said. “It just seemed sort of straightforwardly unfair once I figured that out.”

She wonders if she was lulled into working for free by the culture of academia, which drills into everyone that they are lucky to be there. “It is a privilege,” she said.

A spokesperson for Washington University, Joni Westerhouse, said graduate students in Loza’s department were required to have one “mentored teaching experience,” for which they were paid through their stipend. She said they were not considered contingent faculty.

Loza said she continued to teach beyond the requirement, and was not compensated for it, while others were.

In an indication of how widespread the practice of free teaching may be, the Twitter posts reacting to the UCLA job posting included one from Caitlin DeAngelis, a historian. In 2018, while being paid to work as a research associate on a project about the historical connections between Harvard and slavery, she said that she voluntarily taught a course, called “Harvard and Slavery,” normally taught by a tenured professor. She did so because she cared so deeply about the subject.

“The course was an extra responsibility added on (as a lectureship in the history department) that did not come with additional pay,” she said in a text message.

On Twitter, she expressed some regrets about agreeing to teach without salary. “In retrospect,” she wrote, “I shouldn’t have done it for $0.00, but I wanted to get the info out to students.”

Harvard confirmed that DeAngelis had an unpaid lectureship in the fall of 2018.

Linn Cary Mehta is a longtime lecturer at Barnard and says she has seen a devaluation, even though adjuncts often have similar credentials to tenured professors. “When I first started we were called instructor and then lecturer,” she said. “The title changed to adjunct instructor, adjunct lecturer, almost aggressively, as if trying to put us in our place.”


Mehta, who has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia, has spent a career as a part-time worker because she needed the flexibility to care for her husband. She said that unionization at Barnard had provided increased job security through multiyear contracts, and higher salaries per course.

Of the UCLA job posting, she said, “It’s insulting.”

© 2022 The New York Times

Why the world is full of bullshit jobs - Vox

Bullshit Jobs – David Graeber Institute

https://davidgraeber.org/books/bullshit-jobs

STRIKE! Magazine – On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

CRIMINAL CYBER CAPITAL$M
'Tip of the iceberg': Taiwan's spy catchers hunt Chinese poachers of chip talent


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'Tip of the iceberg': Taiwan's spy catchers hunt Chinese poachers of chip talentFILE PHOTO: An engineer holds a chip while posing for a photo, he is in the middle of testing reactions from different materials and shapes that can have on the chip at the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute (TSRI) in Hsinchu


Thu, April 7, 2022, 
By Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu

TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan's spy catchers have launched probes into around 100 Chinese companies suspected of illegally poaching semiconductor engineers and other tech talent, a senior official at the island's Investigation Bureau told Reuters.

That comes on top of seven prosecuted since the start of last year and includes 27 which have either been raided or whose owners have been summoned for questioning by the bureau, the official said.

Home to industry giant TSMC and accounting for 92% of the world's most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity, Taiwan possesses what China needs - chip expertise in spades.

A global chip shortage and Beijing's avowed goal of achieving self-reliance in advanced chips - more forcefully promoted by Chinese President Xi Jinping after a trade war with the former Trump administration - has only intensified the scramble for engineering talent.

Taiwan responded with the creation in December 2020 of a task force within the justice ministry's Investigation Bureau - its main spy catching organisation - to tackle poaching.

Cases where it has taken action with raids or questioning represented "the tip of the iceberg", the official said, asking to remain anonymous so that investigations are not impeded.

The Investigation Bureau said the official's comments represented its views.

Heightened military pressure from China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, has only strengthened Taipei's determination to protect its chip supremacy - an asset also strategically important to the United States as much of its chip manufacturing is outsourced to the island.

Last month the bureau conducted its biggest operation to date - a raid of eight companies aimed at countering what it said was "the Chinese Communist Party's illegal activities of talent-poaching and secret-stealing".

China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

TRICKS EMPLOYED

It is not illegal per se for Chinese firms to hire Taiwanese engineers. Taiwanese law, however, prohibits Chinese investment in some parts of the semiconductor supply chain including chip design and requires reviews for other areas such as chip packaging, making it very difficult for Chinese chip firms to operate on the island legally.

Taiwanese engineers are also free to go to China, but many prefer the quality of life on the island, especially while COVID-19 restrictions make travel harder.

One case under investigation involves a firm that purports to be a Taiwanese data analysis company but which authorities believe is an arm of a Shanghai-based chip firm sending chip design blueprints to China, according to the official and another colleague who spoke with Reuters.

In mid-March, after nearly a year of surveillance, the bureau summoned the firm's owner for questioning. The owner has since been released on bail, they said, declining to identify the company as charges have yet to be laid.

Other tricks employed include incorporating units in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, making it harder to identify money inflows from China.

Beijing-based Starblaze Technology, an integrated circuit (IC) design house, has been accused of running an R&D centre in the tech hub of Hsinchu without approval. It allegedly conducted job interviews via Zoom and used a Hong Kong company to handle payroll and insurance, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters. The trial is ongoing.

Tongfu Microelectronics, a Chinese state-affiliated company, was accused of having an illegal office whose employees received salaries in U.S. dollars in offshore accounts wired via a Hong Kong-based subsidiary. The defendants were found guilty in January.

Starblaze and Tongfu did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

THE MOST WANTED

Lucy Chen, vice president of Taipei-based Isaiah Research, says that last year Chinese chip firms came wooing with salary offers two to three times local levels. Among the most sought-after employees are IC designers, who can work remotely.

While it is difficult to compete on salary, local firms aim to provide more secure long-term career development and perks such daycare centres, massages and gyms on site, said an executive at a Hsinchu chip company, declining to be identified.

Those willing to be poached risk not finding work again at Taiwanese tech firms as well as public shaming. Several senior TSMC executives who went to work for SMIC in China have been branded as traitors in Taiwanese press.

Authorities are also working to increase penalties for poaching. Maximum prison sentences are set to be increased to three years from one year and maximum fines from $5,200 to $520,525.

In a related move, the government has proposed making the leaking of core chip technologies a breach of national security law.

But there are concerns that tougher rules might hinder President Tsai Ing-wen's drive to build a supply chain spanning materials to chip manufacturing.

"What if we put off legitimate foreign investors and damage our national economy due to overly strict regulation?" said the Investigation Bureau senior official.

"It's a dilemma and we need to strike an appropriate balance in between."

($1 = 28.6090 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Frank Jack Daniel)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Chinese scientist sentenced to over 2 years in prison for stealing Monsanto trade secret for China

WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS


Carl Samson
Fri, April 8, 2022

A Chinese scientist who pleaded guilty in January to stealing trade secrets from Missouri-based, global agrochemical firm Monsanto for the benefit of the Chinese government has been sentenced to more than two years in prison.

Xiang Haitao, 44, admitted to stealing copies of a proprietary predictive algorithm known as the Nutrient Optimizer while employed as an imaging scientist with Monsanto’s subsidiary The Climate Corporation in St. Louis from 2008 to 2017.

Xiang moved to China a day after leaving the company in June 2017. There, he worked for the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Soil Science, which is run by the government.

While Xiang was in China, U.S. investigators determined that he possessed copies of the Nutrient Optimizer. He was arrested when he returned to the U.S. in November 2019.

The Nutrient Optimizer is an algorithm that serves as a key component of a farming software platform that collects, stores and visualizes agricultural data and improves agricultural productivity.

Xiang was sentenced to 29 months in prison on Thursday for conspiring to commit economic espionage.

“Xiang conspired to steal an important trade secret to gain an unfair advantage for himself and the PRC,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in a news release. “The victim companies invested significant time and resources to develop this intellectual property.”

On top of his prison term, Xiang was sentenced to three years of supervised release and fined $150,000.

“Economic espionage is a serious offense that can threaten U.S. companies’ competitive advantage, and the National Security Division is committed to holding accountable anyone who steals trade secrets to benefit a foreign government,” Olsen added.

Xiang’s sentencing is the result of the Trump-era China Initiative, which came under scrutiny for being “anti-Asian” and was consequently replaced with the more comprehensive Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats in February.

“Those who conspire to steal technology from U.S. businesses and transfer it to China cause tremendous economic damage to our country,” Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division said. “The government of China does not hesitate to go after the ingenuity that drives our economy.

“Stealing our highly prized technology can lead to the loss of good-paying jobs here in the United States, affecting families, and sometimes entire communities. Our economic security is essential to our national security. That’s why at the FBI protecting our nation’s innovation is both a law enforcement and a top national security priority.”

Xiang faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and $5 million in fines.