How Midsize Companies Can Access Capital in Turbulent Times

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How Midsize Companies Can Access Capital in Turbulent Times   For the past year or more, all kinds of economic warning signs have been flashing for business leaders — rising interest rates, falling stock prices, the growing risk of recession. In times like these, cash is king. You might need it to protect yourself in a storm; or, you might want cash because you have a chance to play offense. But how will you line up those funds? Investments in middle market companies from private equity firms has drifted downward over the past 10 years while lending to middle market companies has fallen nearly 60% over the past year. What’s more, you cannot rely on commercial banks for your lending needs the way you probably used to do. Under the current circumstances, getting a good deal on new capital is not going to be like it was during the past “cheap money” environment. This article offers advice for mid-market companies trying to raise capital in uncertain times. Continued here

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The Rise and Fall of the J. Peterman Company   You create a company out of nothing. Five hundred dollar investment. It grows. It sparks. It hums. It’s powerful, heady. You want to reflect that power, but you also want your employees to understand that you haven’t changed. You are authentic and without pretense. You wear boots and jeans and a denim shirt to the office, and you wear boots and jeans and a denim shirt to bank meetings, meetings with investors, and on television. You are who you want to be. J.P. Jeans, $38. J.P. Boots, $300. Continued here

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The Rise and Fall of the J. Peterman Company   You create a company out of nothing. Five hundred dollar investment. It grows. It sparks. It hums. It’s powerful, heady. You want to reflect that power, but you also want your employees to understand that you haven’t changed. You are authentic and without pretense. You wear boots and jeans and a denim shirt to the office, and you wear boots and jeans and a denim shirt to bank meetings, meetings with investors, and on television. You are who you want to be. J.P. Jeans, $38. J.P. Boots, $300. Continued here

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Balancing Digital Innovation and Customer Trust in the Middle East and Africa - SPONSORED CONTENT FROM Mastercard   Consumers in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are often early adopters of new products and services— especially when they are offered by brands that do good. These consumers are eager for a better customer experience with brands whose values are aligned with theirs and with companies that have demonstrated care and concern in the past. What’s more, just over half (54%) of MEA customers are willing to exchange their personal data to receive an excellent experience that anticipates their needs, compared with 36% of global customers, according to a January 2022 Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey. Continued here

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What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)   Although most people believe that they are self-aware, true self-awareness is a rare quality. In this piece, the author describes a recent large-scale investigation that shed light on some of the biggest roadblocks, myths, and truths about what self-awareness really is — and what it takes to cultivate it. Specifically, the study found that there are actually two distinct types of self-awareness, that experience and power can hinder self-awareness, and that introspection doesn’t always make you more self-aware. Understanding these key points can help leaders learn to see themselves more clearly. Continued here

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Finding a Job is Stressful. Here's How to Get Through it.   Matthew Fox, the acclaimed theologian and activist who wrote The Reinvention of Work, says, “Our work is meant to be a grace. It’s a blessing and a gift, even a surprise and an act of unconditional love, toward the community…” It’s grand and a little gushy, but deep down inside, even for non-sentimental jobseekers, it rings true. Continued here

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How to Make Friends with Your Inner Imposter   Imposter syndrome is the persistent, nagging thought that tells us that we are undeserving of our achievements. If you have ever felt that way, you’re not alone. Through the many conversations Amantha Imber has had with guests on her podcast, she has learned that no matter how competent or successful people are, many still continue to feel the same insecurities and fears. But unlike many of us, they have figured out ways to channel their emotions into something productive. Here’s how: Continued here

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This Time Management Expert Is Making the Case for a Bare-Minimum Daily Routine    Other fans of the relaxed, realistic daily routine? Albert Einstein and Jeff Bezos. Continued here

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Warren Buffett Says the People You Hang Out With Can Be the Difference Between Success and Failure. Here Are 3 Types You Need in Your Life   Warren Buffett warns, 'If you hang around with people that behave worse than you, pretty soon you'll start sliding down the pole.' Continued here

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How to Revamp Your Reporting in 2023   You rely on reports to help you make decisions. However, you might not be getting the most from your reporting if you're not taking these steps. Continued here

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3 Important Lifestyle Changes Entrepreneurs Should Consider Trying in 2023   Make these simple habit upgrades to avoid burnout, optimize your efficiency, and be a role model for your team. Continued here

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5 Things Great Basketball Teams Have in Common With Great Businesses   Success is about mindset, culture, and teamwork. Continued here

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Why You Must Eradicate 'Fit' From Your Company Vocabulary   Stop fostering exclusion and limiting potential. Move beyond excuses to embrace the challenge of change. Continued here

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This CEO Says Primary Caregiver Parents Are Unfair to Their Children and Employers: Why Being 'Authentic' Doesn't Mean Saying Everything You Think   To paraphrase Dave Chappelle, when being true to yourself can go very wrong. Continued here

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Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas Put Their Business Relationship to the Test   They pull back the curtain on their relationship as business partners with a game of Know Your Co. Continued here

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Stop Bad Leadership Habits With a 'Not-To-Do' List   Stop Bad Leadership Habits With a 'Not-To-Do' List Continued here

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SBA to Expand Veterans Business Outreach Centers to 6 Additional States in 2023   A $3.5 million boost will help the agency expand its veteran business support programs to a total of 28 locations. Continued here

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What Employers Can Do to Make Childbirth Safer in the U.S.   When it comes to maternal and infant outcomes from childbirths, the United States has a worse record than other developed countries. Employers can help address this major problem by taking these steps: improve the design of benefits, mandate that health plans provide information on the quality of care to their members, require plans to routinely report to them on the quality of care, ask plans to pay providers for value, and push plans to highlight quality providers for employees and their families. Continued here

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There's No Silver Bullet for Cybersecurity   Governments are incapable of fixing the insecurity of the internet by themselves, and businesses are unlikely to do it until the economic pain of ignoring the insecurity of the internet becomes greater than the profits it can earn from it. There are no silver bullets beyond restructuring the internet to rely more on new secure private networks, particularly for the operation of critical infrastructure. That will require businesses, governments, and users in democratic nations to act together to transform the internet into networks that rely on the authentication of people rather than IP addresses, mandate strict rules of online behavior, and maintain cyber police (human or machine) to enforce them. Continued here

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How Martine Rothblatt Started a Company to Save Her Daughter   When serial entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt (founder of Sirius XM) received her seven-year-old daughter’s diagnosis of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH), she created United Therapeutics and developed a drug to save her life. When her daughter later needed a lung transplant, Rothblatt decided to take what she saw as the logical next step: manufacturing organs for transplantation. Continued here

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The German clinics for burnt-out parents   Sebastian Schwerk lay awake at night, his mind racing. His father had recently died of leukaemia. Schwerk had been caring for him for months, together with his siblings, as well as looking after his own family. Now his mother needed care, too. His two older children were going through puberty. And he worried that with so much going on, his youngest son wasn't getting enough attention."All of those issues were causing me huge stress," recalls Schwerk, who is the creative director of a communications agency in Dresden, Germany. "And then my partner said to me: 'You do realise you have a right to a health retreat, don't you?'" Continued here

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Can lucid dreaming be harmful?   Interest in lucid dreaming – awareness of dreaming while sleeping – has been on the rise over the past decade or so, with a particularly big spike in internet searches mid-pandemic.Since it's hard to induce lucid dreams reliably, scientists have been busy working out the best ways to induce these types of dreams. Continued here

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MercadoLibre is a massive fish in a medium-sized pond   MercadoLibre seems to be in the business of bucking trends. As the world of tech slows down in the wake of a funding crunch, and reels from the crash of SVB, the Argentine e-commerce company is in the midst of a growth spurt. It recently announced that it would be hiring 13,000 people across Latin America.MercadoLibre — or Meli, as its stock exchange initials and fans call it — is one of the region’s oldest “proper” tech companies, most often compared to Amazon. By most metrics, the Latin American titan seems to be winning the e-commerce race in Latin America. Continued here

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Tired of easy refunds, China's online sellers are suing and doxxing buyers   Since 2022, dog food seller Liu Xiaoping has emerged as an unlikely hero to disgruntled e-commerce merchants on China’s popular shopping platform, Pinduoduo. Through social media videos, Liu coaches fellow merchants on using legal action to fight their biggest grievance — the platform’s unfair refund policies — and take customers to court. His followers fondly address him as “Lawsuit Bro.”Pinduoduo merchants have long bemoaned the platform’s refund-without-return policy, which allows buyers to easily request refunds for defective products without having to return them. The problem, several sellers told Rest of World, is that Pinduoduo grants refunds much more liberally than other shopping platforms such as Alibaba’s Taobao or JD.com. According to sellers, this allows shoppers to exploit the refund policy to snag freebies. Sellers, who must refund buyers in full, are forced to bear the cost. Pinduoduo did not respond to requests for comment. Continued here

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Noah Raford Can Help You Prepare for a Not-So-Nice Future   On this week’s episode of Have a Nice Future, Gideon Lichfield and Lauren Goode are joined by someone whose full-time job was to predict the future. Noah Raford spent nearly 15 years working as the chief futurist for the United Arab Emirates, where he advised the government on how to prepare for all sorts of futuristic challenges, from pandemics to global warming. His advice? Get comfortable with discomfort.  Check out our coverage on climate change, including some ideas on how to talk to your kids about it. Don’t miss our stories on AI and ChatGPT, especially Lauren’s review of ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard. Continued here

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As Sea Levels Rise, the East Coast Is Also Sinking   Climate scientists already know that the East Coast of the United States could see around a foot of sea-level rise by 2050, which will be catastrophic on its own. But they are just beginning to thoroughly measure a "hidden vulnerability" that will make matters far worse: The coastline is also sinking. It's a phenomenon known as subsidence, and it's poised to make the rising ocean all the more dangerous, both for people and coastal ecosystems.New research published in the journal Nature Communications finds that the Atlantic Coast—home to more than a third of the US population—is dropping by several millimeters per year. In Charleston, South Carolina, and the Chesapeake Bay, it's up to 5 millimeters (a fifth of an inch). In some areas of Delaware, it's as much as twice that.  Continued here

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The Best Fitbits for Every Type of Activity   If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDThere was a time not too long ago when Fitbit was essentially the only wearable in town, the most popular way to brag about step counts and the rest. While its status has waned in the face of ever-growing competition, Fitbit is still making easy-to-use fitness trackers and watches. Continued here

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The Best Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products for Your Home   Deep-cleaning my house tends to leave me with a lot of plastic bags, paper, and plastic containers to throw away. It got me wondering how I could make my cleaning routines less wasteful. Scientists are developing new ways to recycle plastic, but it's not an Earth-friendly material, and cleaning supplies use a lot of it. Common solutions like disinfecting sprays and soaps are largely composed of water, which makes those products heavy and hard to ship efficiently. Excessive packaging is another factor in cleaning-product waste, as are harmful chemicals that can end up in the water supply (or in you). Add in the risk of microplastic shedding and a gazillion greenwashed Instagram ads, and it can be difficult to know how to make things clean and greener. Continued here

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6 Great Deals on Our Favorite Hairstyling Tools   You know those days when your hair just doesn't play ball? It doesn't look good down and it doesn't look good up—you wish you could shave it off and put it back on later. I have those days a lot. Thankfully, I've found a few hair tools that help on those forsaken days, and some of these spendy hair dryers and flat irons are discounted right now.Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here

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Twitter's Verification Fiasco May End in Court   Twitter's verification system debacle has had more twists than a Stephen King novel—fitting, given that the author has been at the center of yet another storm on the platform. A "legacy" verified user because of his fame as a horror novelist, King likely expected to lose his blue check mark on April 20, the date Twitter's owner, Elon Musk, announced he planned to remove the demarcation from all legacy users.But while those around him were losing their blue ticks, King kept his. It soon emerged that Musk had chosen the writer and two others—NBA star LeBron James and Star Trek actor William Shatner—to receive the blue check for free. Those new blue checks come with a label saying: "This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number." King objected. "My Twitter account says I've subscribed to Twitter Blue," he tweeted. "I haven't. My Twitter account says I've given a phone number. I haven't." Continued here

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Microsoft's Cloud Gaming Dreams Are Falling Apart   In the window of Microsoft's London flagship store on Oxford Circus, there's a bigger-than-lifesize all-terrain vehicle—a souvenir of the company's $7.5 billion takeover of ZeniMax, owner of game publisher Bethesda, creator of Halo, in 2021. A year after that deal closed, Microsoft launched an even more ambitious play—a $69 billion bid for Activision Blizzard, owner of some of the game industry's most valuable intellectual property, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and The Elder Scrolls.It was the biggest cash deal in tech, and it wasn't just about buying titles that would help move Xboxes. On one level, it was a way to underpin Microsoft's move beyond the console, to become a "Netflix for games" that meant customers were no longer tethered to a single device, but bought into a gaming ecosystem on the cloud. But it was more than that. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, said he expected the acquisition to play a "key role" in the company's metaverse platforms—its forays into virtual worlds beyond just gaming. Continued here

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A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 From Joining Social Media   A new bipartisan federal proposal introduced in the US Senate today would set a national age limit for using social media, effectively banning anyone 12 and under from using the apps many children currently spend hours a day on.There are countless efforts floating around Capitol Hill aimed at safeguarding the nation’s children from the dangers of social media, but this new measure, known as the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, takes aim at the algorithms Silicon Valley employs to keep kids on their sites. Specifically, it bars children under 13 from creating accounts on social media apps, while also greatly curtailing the algorithms tech companies could deploy on people between 13 and 17 years old. (Users under 13 would still be able to view online content, provided they aren’t logged into an account.) The bill would also require parental consent before anyone under 18 could create a profile. To ensure pre-teens and children don’t create social media profiles, the bill would also create a government-run age-verification program, overseen by the Department of Commerce. The system would require children and their parents to upload identification to prove their age. While the legislation doesn’t mandate that companies use the government system, it would nevertheless represent a significant expansion of the government’s role in the online ecosystem. Continued here

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Wolfgang Pauli's quantum rule makes existence possible   Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If you were to investigate what any object is made out of, you could subdivide it into progressively smaller and smaller chunks. All living creatures are made up of cells, which in turn are composed of a complex array of molecules, which themselves are stitched together out of atoms. Atoms themselves can be broken down further: into atomic nuclei and electrons. And finally, atomic nuclei can be further decomposed into their constituent fundamental particles: quarks and gluons. At an elementary level, these are the constituent components of all matter on Earth and, for that matter, all the normal matter we know of in the Universe.But how do these relatively simple component particles come to make up everything that we see, know, and interact with, here on Earth and in the Universe beyond our world? Even the simplest of complex structures, the atoms, which are composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, come in less than 100 stable or quasi-stable varieties. How is it that such a simple set of “building blocks” gives rise to the enormous diversity of molecules, objects, creatures and everything else we find? Continued here

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AI will fundamentally change the nature of war   Excerpted from How to Fight a War by Mike Martin and published by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. © Mike Martin, 2023. Used by permission. All rights reserved.We live in an age of unprecedented technological advance, and this applies nowhere more than to the field of war. From hyper-sonic missiles and nanotechnology, through space warfare using satellite-based lasers, to biologically-enhanced soldiers, barely a week goes by without news of a new technology that will change warfare forever.  Continued here

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Video games and the paradox of failure   This article was first published on Big Think in December 2018. It was updated in April 2023. Ask someone why they play video games, and they’ll likely say it’s a fun way to spend an evening. Watch that same person as they play, and you’ll doubt they possess an inkling of self-understanding. Continued here

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That is not how your brain works   The 21st century is a time of great scientific discovery. Cars are driving themselves. Vaccines against deadly new viruses are created in less than a year. The latest Mars Rover is hunting for signs of alien life. But we’re also surrounded with scientific myths: outdated beliefs that make their way regularly into news stories.Being wrong is a normal and inevitable part of the scientific process. We scientists do our best with the tools we have, until new tools extend our senses and let us probe more deeply, broadly, or precisely. Over time, new discoveries lead us to major course corrections in our understanding of how the world works, such as natural selection and quantum physics. Failure, therefore, is an opportunity to discover and learn.1 Continued here

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The 5 executive leadership skills that matter most   Executive leadership skills are in high demand. According to a recent Gartner survey, only 41% of employees believe that senior leaders act in their best interest. And alarmingly, 33% of employees have said they don’t trust their CEO. Leaders face many challenges in today’s business world, such as managing constant and rapid change, engaging employees that work remotely, and creating an environment of respect and belonging. Oftentimes their own skills development takes a backseat, but the list below can serve as a starting point for organizations looking to level up their leaders.  Continued here

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How the Big Bang model was born   The Big Bang model of cosmology says the Universe emerged from a single event in the far past. The model was inspired by the adventurous cosmic quantum egg idea, which suggested that in the beginning, all that exists was compressed into an unstable quantum state. When this single entity burst and decayed into fragments, it created space and time. To take this imaginative notion and craft a theory of the Universe was quite a feat of creativity. To understand the cosmic infancy, it turns out, we need to invoke quantum physics, the physics of the very small. Continued here

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6 fascinating solutions to the ever-baffling "mind-body problem"   One of the enduring problems in philosophy is determining how the world works from our subjective point of view. The “mind-body problem” — how mind and body interact and what they are composed of — takes us to the heart of the matter. While many resolutions have been suggested, some are less satisfactory than others. It is a difficult problem — how can mind and body appear simultaneously different and connected? Morrissey expressed our bafflement thus: “Does the body rule the mind? Or does the mind rule the body? I dunno.” Continued here

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Colorado governor signs tractor right-to-repair law opposed by John Deere   Colorado has enacted the nation's first state law guaranteeing farmers a right to repair tractors and other equipment themselves or at independent repair shops. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed the bill yesterday. Continued here

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The Lenovo ThinkPhone hits shelves April 28 for $699   The definitely named-by-committee "Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola" is finally hitting virtual store shelves. The phone was announced in January as a surprise expansion of the "ThinkPad" brand, and while there are likely lots of ideas you could come up with for a business-focused smartphone, the ThinkPhone appears to be just a regular Motorola phone without much in the way of unique features. Continued here

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An octopus's stripes can act as a unique ID   Octopuses and other camouflaging cephalopods may be the literal embodiment of “now you see me, now you don’t.” Using both rapid color and texture changes, octopuses can blend into nearly every environment by mimicking things like fish on the sea floor or plants swaying with the waves. A cephalopod’s seamless camouflage makes it tricky for researchers to identify, track, and monitor these creatures in the wild, which has limited our ability to study them. Continued here

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Webb telescope probes the chemistry in a hot gas giant's atmosphere   Up until a few decades ago, the only planets we knew about were in our own Solar System, and that shaped the way we thought about planet formation and planetary chemistry. Now, with the identification of a large population of exoplanets, we have a lot of examples of things we've never seen before: mini Neptunes, super Earths, and hot Jupiters abound. Continued here

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TikTok ban stalls as Montana governor suggests covering all foreign foes   Earlier this month, Montana passed the first bill to ban TikTok statewide, upsetting critics who claimed the law was unenforceable, both technically and legally. Now The Wall Street Journal reports that before the controversial bill could even officially reach Governor Greg Gianforte’s desk, he was already taking a pen to the bill and crossing out every mention of TikTok. Gianforte’s press secretary, Kaitlin Price, told Ars that his intent was to amend the bill to address critics’ technical and legal concerns with the original language. Continued here

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Elizabeth Holmes gets bail extension one day before prison term start   Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes just got a little more freedom—a delay of her 11-year prison sentence, which was previously scheduled to start Thursday, April 27. Continued here

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review: An immense sequel that aims high and hits   2019's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was one of the rare Star Wars games to capture the thrills and the spirit of adventure that come with being a Jedi exploring the galaxy. With AAA production flair, the game blended a very '90s Star Wars expanded universe setup with the scale of a modern action-adventure game to great effect. The sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor significantly ups its predecessor’s scale, continuing Cal Kestis' story while expanding the suite of Jedi powers and worlds to explore. Continued here