"Inflation?" Nah, "Skimplation." Taliban Murders Wedding Guests for Playing Music, Labor Union Strikes Growing?! Facebook Uses Spears' Lawyer to Sue Upcoming TV Show (The Five for 11/02/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Here’s what’s happening in the world while everyone was arguing about whether the Southwest pilot said “Let’s go Brandon,” “Let’s go Braves.”
(Spoiler alert: it doesn’t really matter. Here’s the actual news.)
[one]
If you’re both worried and annoyed with inflation and poor customer service…those two negative elements of modern life may be merging into a phenomenon known as “skimpflation.”
Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.
We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared with what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide.
[two]
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who gave an official statement on the wedding attack.
Civilians in Afghanistan were killed for playing music at a wedding over the weekend.
The attack was carried out by three assailants who claimed to be members of the Taliban before opening fire, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters at a press conference Sunday.
Mujahid said the gunmen attacked a reception taking place in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar Province. A local journalist also told CNN at least two people had been killed and 10 others injured.
The Taliban spokesman added that it was not permissible to kill anyone for playing music, and an investigation was underway to establish whether the incident was due to a personal feud.
"In the ranks of the Islamic Emirate no one has the right to turn anyone away from music or anything, only to try to persuade them. That is the main way," Mujahid told the press conference, according to AFP.
Mujahid later reiterated in a series of Twitter posts that the suspects had claimed to be Taliban members, and had asked for the music to be stopped before firing before opening fire -- but did not verify whether or not they were. He said two people connected to the incident had been arrested, but a third had escaped.
In other words, the attack may not have been carried out by “official” Taliban, but is certainly in line with the beliefs of the new regime.
In August, popular folk singer Fawad Andarabi (pictured above) was dragged into the streets of his hometown and shot. At the time, a Taliban spokesperson responded to the brutal execution by saying “music is forbidden in Islam.”
You can take a listen to a song from Fawad in this YouTube video.
[three]
For the last two weeks, I’ve been closely watching (and praying) for a peaceful outcome to the John Deere strike, as I have close friends/family/contacts on all sides of this issue.
My family farms with John Deere equipment, and could struggle with getting replacement parts during the harvest. I have childhood friends on the picket line right now, and I know folks at Deere corporate who are now putting in 12 hour days, six days a week, picking parts in the warehouses.
According to ABC news, the strike may be contagious, as the underlying issues aren’t unique to John Deere:
The first strike in more than three decades at John Deere comes after the company reported earning a record-high $4.68 billion during the first nine months of the 2021 fiscal year, more than double the $1.993 billion reported during the same time last year.
John Deere's chairman and CEO John May, meanwhile, earned compensation of some $15.58 million in fiscal year 2020, according to a company SEC filing. This would make the ratio of the CEO’s total compensation to a median employee's total compensation in 2020 approximately 220 to 1, the SEC filing states.
The recent bout of employee activism that has manifested in work stoppages and strikes in recent weeks comes after the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic that took an inordinate toll on workers deemed "essential," but also after decades of soaring income inequality in the U.S., experts have said.
"I think workers have reached a tipping point," Tim Schlittner, the communications director of the coalition of labor unions AFL-CIO, told ABC News last month shortly after the Deere strike commenced. "For too long they've been called essential, but treated as expendable, and workers have decided that enough is enough."
Schlittner said the pandemic also exposed some deep "imbalances of power in the economy."
"The pandemic has made clear what's important and what's not, and workers are looking at work in a new way, and demanding more of a return on their labor and demanding things like basic respect, dignity and safety on the job," he said. "The pandemic has put on display for everyone to see how important workers are to this country, and you can't call workers essential for 18 months and then treat them like crap when they all come back on the job."
According to a poll from Gallup conducted in September, support for labor unions is at the highest point since 1967.
[four]
After a COVID scare inside the Disney park in Taiwan, the park closed and 34,000 people were held inside and tested before being allowed to leave.
Fireworks boomed as visitors at Shanghai Disneyland waited for COVID-19 test results, surrounded by health care workers dressed from head to toe in white protective suits.
Shanghai Disneyland announced suddenly Sunday evening that it was no longer accepting any new visitors and was cooperating with an epidemiological investigation from another province. The park was locked down as Shanghai city healthcare workers and police rushed to conduct a mass testing of visitors already inside.
Both Shanghai Disneyland and Disneytown will remain shut Monday and Tuesday "in order to follow the requirement of pandemic prevention and control," Shanghai Disney Resort said on its website Monday.
The park's sudden lockdown and temporary closure underscored just how serious China is about enforcing its zero-tolerance pandemic prevention strategy.
Since Disney is primarily a vacation destination for families with young children, I can only imagine how much distress many of the park’s guests (including the very young) experienced at being locked inside.
[five]
This story would normally run on Friday (the Culture & Commentary issue of The Five), but because but the legal element of this makes Facebook’s spat over a potential TV show hard news.
In 2010, Facebook endured a heavy blow to the company’s reputation with the release of The Social Network, the blockbuster film that deals with whether or not founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea and double crossed his co-founders.
Now, Meta (the newly renamed parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) is retaining Britney Spears’ lawyer to help ensure the tech giant isn’t portrayed unfavorably in another pop culture project.
The Verge reports:
Doomsday Machine is the upcoming television adaption of An Ugly Truth, a book that exposes Facebook’s missteps on issues like misinformation, hate speech, user security. The drama will star Claire Foy as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and will tackle the chaos surrounding misinformation during the 2016 election, as well as more recent controversies like the XCheck program, which let celebrities and other high-profile figures bypass content moderation.
As the series begins to come together, Facebook is threatening producers Anonymous Content with a lawsuit — and it’s using Britney Spears’ lawyers to do so (via Deadline). According to Deadline, Mathew Rosengart, the same lawyer who helped free Spears from her conservatorship, sent a letter to Anonymous Content CEO Dawn Olmstead, detailing the legal action Facebook might take if any false statements or exaggerations about the company appear in the show.
As stated in the letter obtained by Deadline, Rosengart says that “the First Amendment does not protect knowingly false statements or portrayals — or those made with reckless disregard for the truth — even about public figures.”
He then goes on to attack the accuracy of An Ugly Truth, noting that it’s “replete with false and defamatory statements, characterizations, and implications about Facebook and its leadership.” If Anonymous Content decides to put any of these so-called falsities in its television adaption, Rosengart says that “Facebook will take all appropriate legal action.” To our knowledge, Facebook hasn’t taken legal action against the authors or publisher of An Ugly Truth.
Rosengart even mentioned that Facebook is willing to work with Anonymous Content to ensure that the series is “accurate and truthful.” As for whether Anonymous Content will consider getting Facebook’s input, that’s still up in the air. The Verge reached out to Anonymous Content for a statement and hasn’t heard back.
In other words, Facebook won’t sue the TV producers for making the show…if Facebook is allowed to edit out the really nasty bits about themselves.
Until the next one,
-sth