Sixty-two of the Best Documentaries of All Time | FTX’s Organizational Chaos | How Diet Builds Better Bones: Surprising Findings on Vitamin D, Coffee, and More | Inside Paypal’s Billion Dollar Battle For Payment Processing Dominance

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Sixty-two of the Best Documentaries of All Time - The New Yorker

Since the pandemic hit and social life became severely constrained, I’ve been obsessing even more than usual about documentaries. Their very essence is to provide virtual connections to people in far-off times and places—and to experiences that would otherwise remain unshared, even among people close by. Craving such virtual connections, I’ve been watching far more documentaries than I usually do—especially given the dearth of new releases—and more of them than I can squeeze into the regular round of reviews.

This has been no sharp break but only an intensification of the last few years of my movie-watching, which have offered a plethora of rediscoveries (thanks to the ardent connoisseurship of repertory programmers) and have given a new urgency to my viewing of documentaries (thanks to changes in the field). Nonfiction filmmaking has been undergoing an aesthetic revolution over the past decade or so, one that parallels the major change in fiction filmmaking, namely, a shift toward personalization. The main expression and key movement in that change is mumblecore, which has exerted a wide-ranging influence through its luminaries, its aesthetic, and its ideas. Mumblecore’s documentary counterpart is creative nonfiction, an idea that’s rooted in the filmmaker’s presence, be it physical or virtual, and in the conspicuous display of process.

The artistic preoccupations of the new generation of documentary filmmakers don’t break with those of earlier generations; rather, they have their roots in decades-old films, in which the same ideas and practices sometimes turn up in forms—embodying the filmmakers’ relationship to their subjects—that seem daringly original even now. The most artistically advanced documentaries are those in which the participants are engaging conspicuously with the filmmakers; in their most radical forms, they show the influences, inspirations, or perturbations that the people onscreen experience from the filmmakers’ presence. Which is another way of saying that, although documentaries follow real people, their crucial material and subject is nonetheless performance.

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FTX’s Organizational Chaos - The Atlantic

A witness testimony this week portrayed a workplace filled with fraught power dynamics, disorganization, and hubris.

In federal court this week, Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, testified against her former boss and boyfriend, Sam Bankman-Fried. His two fallen crypto enterprises offer an object lesson in how not to run a start-up.

“How would you describe the power dynamic of your personal relationship with the defendant?” a prosecutor asked Caroline Ellison in court on Tuesday. Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers immediately objected to the question, and the judge sustained the objection. But all of us watching Ellison’s testimony in the federal courthouse heard the question. It hung in the air even as the prosecutor rephrased the inquiry.

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How Diet Builds Better Bones: Surprising Findings on Vitamin D, Coffee, and More - Scientific American

For healthy adults who want strong bones, a commonly recommended vitamin doesn’t seem to help, but other things really do

Among my friends, many of whom are women of a certain age, one topic seems to dominate our conversations about health: bones. It makes sense, given that 20 percent of American women ages 50 and older have osteoporosis and that more than half have detectable bone loss (osteopenia). For men, the respective figures are lower: 4 percent and a third. Worldwide, one out of three women over age 50 and one out of five older men will develop an osteoporotic fracture—a hip, a wrist, a vertebra or two. Another reason for the endless jawboning about bones is mass confusion over how best to strengthen your skeleton and whether diet and supplements really make a difference.

Diet research is always messy, and study results on nutrition and bone health have been wildly inconsistent. But gradually some clarity is emerging. As we draw up resolutions for what to eat in the coming year, it's useful to look at new data on vitamin D, as well as recent research on coffee and other foods.

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Inside Paypal’s Billion Dollar Battle For Payment Processing Dominance - Forbes

Consumers rarely even think about who processes their payments at checkout. Whether it's being handled in the back offices of a traditional bank like JPMorgan or by a fintech like PayPal or Stripe, it merely needs to be fast, and hassle free. However, behind the scenes there is a battle underway to control 'buy now' technology. Last year e-commerce sales in the U.S. alone surpassed $1 trillion, from which billions in revenues and profits flowed to dozens of firms vying to be at the center of the transactions.

Among processors PayPal, with $27.5 billion in 2022 revenues, is an industry giant. In September, its new CEO Alex Chriss, 46, took the reins, inheriting a company that has embraced a risky low price strategy, similar to Dell's approach to selling IBM PC clones in the 1990s. Last year, the San Jose company began cutting the cost of payment services it offers under its Braintree brand, a white-label service that lets companies small and large accept debit cards, credit cards and other payment methods from consumers. Research firm MoffetNathanson estimates that Braintree revenue jumped to $8.4 billion in 2022 from $6.2 billion in 2021, making up roughly 30% of PayPal's total net revenue. Braintree is now growing faster than other parts of PayPal and unbranded transactions, which are mostly driven by Braintree, jumped 40% in 2022. PayPal's branded business, when consumers click on the yellow PayPal button, grew only 5% in 2022.

"PayPal was doing something to juice that growth and it was likely giving it up on pricing," says Chris Donat, fintech and payments research lead for BWG Strategy.

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