Image of the week: Hug-and-go
Let’s indulge in the wisdom of Dunedin Airport in New Zealand, which has put up signs outside the terminal building telling sentimental travellers to just get on with their emotional goodbyes, thank you very much.
“Max hug time three minutes,” they warn, adding that those wishing for “fonder farewells” should head to the car park – for up to 15 minutes – instead.
Now it sounds like this could be a genius tourism marketing strategy for the South Island city, but the airport says the “cuddle cap” – introduced in September – is designed to “keep things moving smoothly” in a reconfigured passenger drop-off area.
Three minutes is “plenty of time to pull up, say farewell to your loved ones and move on”, the airport’s chief executive, Dan De Bono, told the Associated Press, while the “quirky” approach also happens to be kinder on the pocket than the drop-off fees now in place at some airports.
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Enforcement will be light touch. “We do not have hug police,” says De Bono.
As ways of regulating congestion around airports go, there’s been worse ideas.
In numbers: Lost satellites
20
“Associate pieces” of Boeing-made communications satellite IS-33e now being tracked by the US Space Force after it broke up in orbit, with its operator, Intelsat, confirming a “total loss”.
57
Pieces of debris from the same satellite being monitored by satellite-tracking company ExoAnalytic Solutions. Whatever the number, the lifespan of the satellite – which launched in 2016 and was originally meant to last 15 years – has not been stellar.
Three
Years in space managed by IS-29e, another Boeing-manufactured satellite, before it was also declared a “total loss” after a fuel leak in 2019.
Getting to know: EY’s multi-screeners
There are some lines of work where streaming more than one training video at a time would be regarded as innovation worthy of promotion, but the world of the Big Four professional-services firms is not one of them. In the United States, EY has fired dozens of staff for attending more than one online training class at a time during “EY Ignite Learning Week” in pursuit of obligatory professional education credits.
Several of the fired employees said they didn’t believe they were violating any EY policy and were simply trying to consume as many courses as possible. “We all work with three monitors,” one told the Financial Times.
Another said the firm “breeds a culture of multitasking” by loading training courses on top of the requirement to amass billable hours. Other EY staff have deemed the sackings an overreaction. Best to do only one thing at a time from now on, just to be safe?
The list: Musk’s election misinformation
An analysis by CBS News has found that 55 per cent of Elon Musk’s X posts on election security contain misleading or false statements, or amplify posts that do. So, what nonsense is he coming out with?
1. Election fraud: His 361 posts on this subject in 2024 – which include frequent discussion of potential tampering with voting machines – have been seen by an average of 9.3 million people each, promoting falsehoods that “could set the stage for possible post-election chaos”, CBS said.
2. Immigration conspiracy: “The goal all along has been to important as many illegal voters as possible,” the X owner posted in July. This is not, funnily enough, the actual Democratic Party policy on immigration.
[ Elon Musk makes being a billionaire plutocrat look profoundly uncoolOpens in new window ]
3. Michigan madness: After he erroneously stated on X that Michigan has more registered voters than eligible citizens, he was corrected by Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, who he then accused of “blatantly lying to the public”, sparking a barrage of threats to her office.
4. Photo ID falsehood: Musk has reposted disinformation by racist X account EndWokeness falsely claiming that the number of people registering to vote without photo ID was “skyrocketing” in three states. “Extremely concerning,” was his verdict, which was once again untroubled by facts.
5. Civilisation claim: “If we want to preserve freedom and a meritocracy in America, then Trump must win,” he posted last month on the basis that “civilisation as we know it is on the line”. Well, it might be, but not for the reason Musk says.
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