(^38) Best columns: Business
If you had to choose “a corporate pandemic casualty
that the world wouldn’t particularly miss,” Stumpy’s
might well be it, said Justin Peters. Stumpy’s is a
fast-growing chain of hatchet houses—BYOB joints
where customers can “huck hatchets at wooden
targets while drinking beers indoors.” Stumpy’s
doesn’t have anything to offer for curbside pickup
or delivery, and ax throwing doesn’t “pivot well to
digital.” But while bars, restaurants, movie theaters,
and performance venues have been reeling, many
“smaller-scale fun palaces” have defied the odds.
Hatchet houses emerged before the pandemic along
with other “low-budget entertainment facilities for
grown-ups, like escape rooms and happy-hour paint-
ing studios,” filling a need for adults who have been
“underserved by the broader entertainment market.”
When it opened in 2016 as the “first and only in-
door hatchet-throwing facility in the U.S.,” Stumpy’s
in Eatontown, N.J., made $30,000 to $50,000 per
month. Today, there are 27 franchise establishments
in 11 states and 10 more on the way. It’s helpful that
they have low costs—basically just axes, targets, and
commemorative T-shirts. But places like Stumpy’s can
also offer something coveted in the age of lockdowns
and streaming: A night out that delivers more than
“simply sitting and staring at a screen.”
The software giant Oracle puts profit over national
security and human rights through secretive work
with China, said Mara Hvistendahl. Since it began
building databases for the CIA in the 1970s, Oracle
has “fostered a reputation for being closely aligned
with the U.S. government.” Larry Ellison, Oracle’s
co-founder and chairman, “criticized Google’s 2018
plans for a censored Chinese search engine” as un-
American. But between 2010 and 2020, Oracle was
also pitching its software to the Chinese government
for “key surveillance initiatives,” including in Xin-
jiang, site of the genocide against the Uighur Muslim
population. Chinese-language presentations hosted
on Oracle’s own website offer examples of how pro-
vincial police departments can deploy the company’s
analytic software for predictive policing, helping scan
the “mounds of data” collected by China’s pervasive
surveillance network. Oracle downplayed the materi-
als as marketing “pitch decks” and denies actually
selling software for these uses. But Oracle’s China
contacts run deep; a company senior director, Hong-
Eng Koh, simultaneously held a visiting research posi-
tion at China’s leading police academy. Oracle’s rela-
tionship with China raises national security questions.
It also “paints a disturbing picture of a company
sacrificing its professed values” to push its products. Ge
tty
A surprising,
inspiring
hatchet job
Justin Peters
Slate.com
Oracle wants
to work with
China’s cops
Mara Hvistendahl
TheIntercept.com
Prospects for a swift travel rebound are
dimming, said Mike Cherney and Eric
Sylvers in The Wall Street Journal. After
the worst year for tourism on record,
the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines was
expected to be “the great panacea”
in 2021. “But at current vaccination
rates, less than 20 percent of the world’s
population is expected to be inoculated
this year,” according to recent estimates.
The spread of coronavirus variants from
places like South Africa, Brazil, and the
United Kingdom means governments
will remain cautious before easing travel
restrictions, and many travelers appear hesitant to begin booking
trips again. Air tickets issued for international travel in the coming
six months actually fell in February. Overall, they remain down
85 percent from this time in 2019. One travel data company pro-
jects travel bookings will stay below 2019 levels until 2024. The
recovery in Europe will be “even slower.”
Faced with these gloomy prospects, some countries are pushing
for “vaccine passports,” said Tariro Mzezewa in The New York
Times. It’s not a new concept. For decades, “people traveling to
some countries have had to prove they’ve been vaccinated against
diseases such as yellow fever, rubella, and cholera” by getting a
signed and stamped “yellow card,” or International Certificate
of Vaccination. The hope is that digital technology can accelerate
things. Denmark has said it plans to roll out its own “digital pass-
port,” but it will still take three to four months. The U.S. has only
started assessing the feasibility of digitized vaccination proof. The
idea of a “golden ticket” for certain travelers is “deeply conten-
tious,” said Barry Neild in CNN.com.
In addition to privacy and fraud con-
cerns, the World Health Organization
last month said it worried about “the
fairness of allowing those inoculated to
trot the world while others continue to
endure lockdown.”
Already-vaccinated seniors aren’t
hesitating, said Debra Kamin in The
New York Times. In fact, Americans
65 and older are “leading a wave in
new travel bookings.” At the Foundry
Hotel in Asheville, N.C., “reservations
made with the hotel’s AARP promotional rate were up 50 percent
last month.” And it’s not just domestic travel. A luxury cruise
operator in the Galápagos Islands said that “70 percent of his
booking inquiries have come from guests over 65” since Jan. 1.
“Wide-open, remote places” seem to be the most popular picks,
said Nikki Ekstein in Bloomberg.com. African safaris are quickly
filling up for the summer. One travel site said bookings to Antarc-
tica are actually up 25 percent since before the pandemic.
“The travel bug seems certain to outlast the virus,” said The
Economist, and tourism could end up improved. Destinations will
boast about safety and hygiene as much as their “scenery, cuisine,
and beaches.” Flexible rebooking policies at many travel compa-
nies and airlines seem likely to stay, as well as dynamic pricing
that better matches supply and demand. Covid has also given
countries “the opportunity to reset tourism” to be more sustain-
able and economically equitable, turning “a bruised and battered
industry into a better one.”
Travel: Few hints of spring for a battered industry
Antarctica: A bright spot for socially distant travel
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