| | | | | | | Presented By Bank of America | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen ·Oct 11, 2021 | | 👟 Good Monday morning, and good luck with your run in today's Boston Marathon. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,166 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. | | | | | | 1 big thing: Airbnb CEO warns Big Tech |  | | | Photo: "Axios on HBO" | | | | Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told me in an interview for "Axios on HBO" that the biggest risk to Big Tech is that "the world is rooting against them." - "They don't think they have society's interest in their favor," said Chesky, whose unicorn startup is based in San Francisco.
We spoke about an hour outside the city in Marin County, at one of 3,000 treehouses you can rent on Airbnb, along with igloos, boats, castles — and, in Idaho, a potato. In the wide-ranging interview, I asked Chesky about all the funding that big investors threw at Adam Neumann, the now-disgraced WeWork co-founder and former CEO. - "When I came to Silicon Valley," Chesky replied, "there was probably a lack of skepticism about the whole industry. And that can be helpful to a point — if you live in a world that's completely skeptical, it's hard for new ideas to be embraced."
- "But a world of no skepticism can have some big downsides. I think that the lesson is that ... we have to be a little more skeptical of things, probably a little bit earlier. "
So how do so many rich people get duped by tech dreamers? - Chesky pointed to the fear of looking stupid: When his company — then called Airbed & Breakfast — was founded in 2007, "you gave us $150,000, you could have owned 10% of this company. And a number of people said no. In fact, almost everyone I met said no."
- "So I think there's this perpetual culture where people ... completely swing for the fences. They have a fear of missing out. Maybe they were successful. They pattern-recognize. They're like: This person reminds me of something else that was successful. And that can get you in a little bit of trouble if you're not skeptical enough."
I asked Chesky about discrimination against Black travelers that had plagued the platform. - "Four or five years ago, there was this really concerning hashtag that was trending on Twitter ... #AirbnbWhileBlack," he recalled.
So Airbnb imposed a Community Commitment, requiring hosts and guests to promise to treat everyone in the Airbnb community "without judgment or bias," regardless of race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age. - "1.3 million people decided not to do that," Chesky said. "And we kicked them all off the site."
Watch a clip. |     | | | | | | 2. Tech is tougher than tobacco |  | | | Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios | | | | Critics say Big Tech is having a "Big Tobacco moment." But reining in tech giants will be even trickier than reducing the toll of smoking, Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried writes from San Francisco. - Big Tobacco was a relatively stationary target, with the giants all producing roughly the same product, and doing so year after year.
- But tech products differ widely, as do the perceived harms.
Between the lines: It took more than a decade to put significant regulation on Big Tobacco, The New York Times notes (subscription). - There are clear parallels, including companies hiding and then downplaying internal research.
- But the case against Facebook and other tech companies is considerably murkier and more debatable.
- And lawmakers face the challenge of crafting limits that won't quickly become obsolete.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 3. ✈️ Southwest's mystery meltdown |  | | | Red bars on a flight board at Dallas Love Field yesterday mark a slew of Southwest cancellations. Photo: Julie March/AP | | | | Southwest canceled more than 1,800+ flights over the weekend, leaving passengers stranded across the country, Michael Mooney and Tasha Tsiaperas report in Axios Dallas, where the airline is based. - 29% of yesterday's flights were canceled, per FlightAware.
Why it matters: The mass cancellations came after pilots asked a federal court to block the COVID vaccine mandate the company imposed last week for all employees. Between the lines: Airline insiders and conservatives wonder if the cancellations are part of a "sick out" in response to the vaccine policy. - Southwest's pilot union said the cancellations weren't part of a planned labor demonstration.
Southwest said the cancellations and delays were caused by "disruptive weather" and air traffic control "issues." - The FAA clapped back: "No FAA air traffic staffing shortages have been reported since Friday."
| | | | | | | | A message from Bank of America | | A $1.25B investment in advancing equality and economic opportunity | | |  | | | | The urgency to advance racial equality has only increased this year. Recognizing the need to do more, Bank of America is accelerating work already underway to better support communities of color with a $1.25 billion commitment over five years. | | | | | | 4. New data: Flood risk rising | | Map: First Street Foundation Every dot on this map represents trouble: It's a critical public facility that's vulnerable to flooding — airports, fire and police stations, hospitals, schools, libraries, city halls, museums, and power and sewage plants. - 235,000 of these installations — one out of every four in the country — is in danger of becoming inoperable due to flooding, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes from a First Street Foundation report.
👀 Search your address on the Flood Factor website ... Read the release. | | | | | | | | 5. Mapped: Hispanics' rising power |  | | | Graphic: NBC News' "Meet the Press with Chuck Todd" | | | | | | | | | | 6. 🎥 Apple's Hollywood push | | Rendering: Apple Apple will double its employees in L.A. and Culver City to 3,000 by 2026 in a state-of-the-art, 550,000-square-foot campus, the company tells me. - Two new facilities — connected by a shared wall — will be built along National and Venice boulevards, straddling L.A. and Culver City.
Variety said the investment signals Apple's "major entertainment-industry ambitions." Zoom out: This is part of Apple's commitment in April to spend $430 billion in the U.S. and create 20,000 new U.S. jobs over the next five years. | | | | | | | | 7. 🎞️ New 007 opens strong | | Lashana Lynch plays 007 in "No Time To Die." Photo: Nicola Dove/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures via AP After 18 months of pandemic delays, "No Time to Die" — the final James Bond film of the Daniel Craig era — had an encouraging opening: No. 1 for the weekend, with $56 million from 4,407 North American theaters. - It's the fourth-best opening in the 25-film series, AP reports.
- Lashana Lynch makes history as the first Black woman to play a 00 agent in the six decades of James Bond movies.
Between the lines: Bond has always had an older audience, which is typically less inclined to rush out for the first weekend. - This is the longest Bond film ever, at 2 hours, 43 minutes.
Zoom out: The N.Y. Times' Brooks Barnes writes: "[T]he box office is still extremely fragile." But the strong Bond opening gives "Hollywood its third box office success in the span of a month," after "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings." | | | | | | | | 8. What we're watching: "Dopesick" | | Photo: Antony Platt/Hulu Premiering Wednesday on Hulu: From executive producer Danny Strong, starring and executive produced by Michael Keaton ... the 8-episode limited series "Dopesick." - "The series takes viewers to the epicenter of America's struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Big Pharma, to a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the DEA," Hulu says.
"Dopesick" is inspired by the New York Times bestselling book of the same title by Beth Macy, a former Roanoke Times reporter. - The series is shot on location in Virginia, including parts of Appalachia impacted by the crisis, Macy writes on her website.
- Macy says she wrote "Dopesick" by watching the epidemic throttle three Virginia communities over two decades — "a heartbreaking trajectory that explains how the national crisis became so entrenched."
Watch the trailer ... Read the release. | | | | | | | | A message from Bank of America | | It's clear the private sector must do more | | |  | | | | Bank of America has committed to $1.25B over five years to address the underlying issues that communities of color face. The company must "help others convene and serve as a catalyst for a broad-based, collective response to the critical issues affecting our nation," said CEO Brian Moynihan. | | | | 📬 Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here for your own personal copy of Axios AM and Axios PM. |  | | It'll help you deliver employee communications more effectively. | | | |
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