🍸 America has a drinking problem

Plus: The rise of the 4-day workweek and the world's fastest quantum computer | Wednesday, July 07, 2021

Open in app View in browser   Presented By Babbel   Axios What's Next By Bryan Walsh, Joann Muller and Erica Pandey ·Jul 07, 2021 Today it's America's pandemic drinking binge, the case for a four-day workweek and the return of an HBO show that is not "Game of Thrones." "What was next" trivia: On this day in 1947, debris that was supposedly from what object was recovered in a small town in New Mexico? Credit to reader Kimberly King for being the first to note that Althea Gibson became the first Black player to win Wimbledon in 1957. Send your answer, along with tips and feedback, to whatsnext@axios.com. Today's Smart Brevity count: 1,233 words ... 4.5 minutes.     1 big thing: America's deepening drinking habit Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   Americans responded to the stress of the pandemic by drinking more — a lot more for some — and there's a risk that those habits could stick, writes Bryan Walsh. Why it matters: Excessive drinking is connected to a variety of health and social ills, but the growing ubiquity of alcohol in daily life can make cutting back harder than ever. By the numbers: Americans started drinking more as soon as the pandemic began in full last year — data from Nielsen showed a 54% increase in national alcohol sales year-on-year in the week ending on March 21, 2020. And as the pandemic wore on, so did Americans' drinking. A survey from late 2020 found 75% of Americans increased their alcohol intake during the pandemic to include at least one more day per month, while women in particular increased their alcohol intake by 39% compared to 2019. Another survey conducted by the American Psychological Association this year found nearly one in four Americans reported drinking more specifically to combat pandemic-related stress, and a separate study found women had a greater increase in excessive drinking than men, to the point that their intake levels were almost equal. Between the lines: It shouldn't be a surprise that many Americans responded to the stress of the pandemic by turning to the bottle — similar spikes were seen following traumatic events like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. But pandemic tippling occurred against the backdrop of years of growing alcohol consumption and pushed some people toward the particularly destructive habit of solitary drinking. After more than a decade of declining alcohol consumption, per-capita alcohol consumption increased by 8% between 1999 and 2017 and the number of alcohol-related deaths per year doubled to nearly 70,000. Over the same years, alcohol seeped its way out of bars, restaurants and homes and into once-dry areas of daily life, with movie theaters, coffee shops, and supermarkets selling alcohol and/or allowing consumption on site, while the rise of products like spiked seltzers and alcopops widened the market for booze. Sales of liquor rose during the pandemic as well, which is especially worrying as distilled spirits are much easier to abuse than lower-alcohol beer or wine. The unusually solitary nature of pandemic drinking was especially risky, as the writer Kate Julian described in a piece for the Atlantic last month, noting that "solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink." What's next: It's too early to know how the return to in-person socializing will affect drinking trends, though a number of states have moved to extend more liberal pandemic-era alcohol regulations like allowing bars to sell to-go cocktails. The historical American pattern has been to binge — often during periods of social stress and dislocation, like the Industrial Revolution — and then abstain, which means we could be in for a turn away from the hard stuff. Read the rest.     2. A shorter workweek gets a longer look Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios   Before the pandemic, the four-day workweek was a pipe dream. Now, it's quickly gaining popularity, Erica Pandey writes. Why it matters: The pandemic underscored burnout's damaging effect on workforces — and how flexibility can mitigate it. One solution is to work fewer days, which could paradoxically boost productivity. Driving the news: In Iceland, cuts in working hours — without accompanying pay cuts — did not impact worker productivity, new research shows, and employees reported less stress and an improved work-life balance, writes Axios' Yacob Reyes. The tech company Kickstarter is experimenting with a four-day workweek, per Axios' Ina Fried. Microsoft's Japan offices reported a 40% spike in productivity during a trial in which employees have Fridays off. The big picture: More and more firms —especially tech companies on the West Coast — are looking into the four-day workweek, but it's still a tiny part of the economy. There are 4.5 times as many ZipRecruiter job postings mentioning four-day workweeks now as there were in 2016, reports Bloomberg. But they only comprise 0.6% of all postings. What's next: It's not just the length of the week that firms are rethinking. The pandemic spotlighted working parents' tough job of juggling work and child care, and one idea is to shorten workdays themselves to align with the school day's 3pm end time, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, writes in the Economist.     3. China claims world's most powerful quantum computer Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   A team of researchers in China say they have built a quantum computer that could complete a calculation in an hour that would take a classical computer some eight years, writes Bryan. Why it matters: Quantum information science promises to revolutionize the computing industry, and the country that masters the technology first will gain a major advantage in the race for the future. Driving the news: Researchers led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei published a pre-print paper last week claiming quantum computational advantage. That's when a quantum computer can perform a calculation that would take the fastest classical computer years or longer to complete, and it's considered an important benchmark for the field. Background: A team from Google claimed it achieved the milestone in 2019, though there was skepticism from some competitors, and another Chinese team led by Pan performed an even more difficult calculation last year. The catch: The new paper isn't peer-reviewed, and results from quantum computing experiments can be notoriously difficult to parse. Go deeper: Why quantum computing matters     A message from Babbel Here's a skill you can show off this summer     Travel, friends, adventures – it's happening. Get ready with Babbel and start having conversations in a new language – such as Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese – in as little as 3 weeks. Get 60% off during their 4th of July sale. Sign up today.     4. The boomerang-worker boom Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios   "Boomerang workers" — those who've returned to their hometowns to do remote work — rose with the pandemic, but the phenomenon shows signs of sticking around beyond it, writes Kim Hart. The big picture: Workers typically have to move to where the jobs are, centralizing top talent in big coastal cities. But as COVID drove rapid adoption of remote work, many people who were able to opted to return to their roots to be closer to family, raise kids in familiar settings or simply escape big city life. What's happening: The boomerang effect isn't limited to any one industry. But tech workers in particular are choosing to leave Big Tech hubs like San Francisco, Seattle and New York and moving back to previous stops, or to their own hometown or a spouse's. That's jumpstarting tech communities in some midsized cities. Of course, plenty of people moved back home for a variety of reasons well before the pandemic hit — but they often had to leave their jobs behind when they did. Now that more companies are allowing remote work, employees often have the freedom to take their jobs with them when they high-tail it home. Or they are starting their own businesses. Read the rest.     5. What's next: HBO's "Succession," finally Some of the cast of "Succession" at an HBO event in 2019. Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, for HBO   The long-awaited trailer for season 3 of HBO's financial drama-comedy-tragedy "Succession" dropped on Tuesday, thrilling the 1 million or so people who watch the show, nearly all of whom can be found on Twitter, writes Bryan. Why it matters: There's definitely a subset of people for whom the yearlong delay in the Emmy-winning show was one of the worse effects of the pandemic. What's happening: Take it away, Home Box Office. Credit: HBO What they're saying: Honestly, almost nothing I can quote in a family newsletter given "Succession"'s Olympian-level use of obscenities. The bottom line: There's no firm date for the "Succession" season premiere, though the pandemic-delayed second half of the new "Billions" season will air on Showtime starting Sept. 5, just in case you need to slake your thirst for sociopathic billionaires a little sooner.     A message from Babbel Here's a skill you can show off this summer     Travel, friends, adventures – it's happening. Get ready with Babbel and start having conversations in a new language – such as Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese – in as little as 3 weeks. Get 60% off during their 4th of July sale. Sign up today.   Like this email style and format? Learn more about Axios HQ. It'll help you deliver employee communications more effectively.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. 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