Lee Dunne + more things

6 minutes estimated reading time

Lee Dunne

How Lee Dunne challenged the depiction of working-class mothers | RTÉ – I originally didn’t know Lee Dunne as a novelist. Instead he was part of my childhood. Lunchtime listening when I wasn’t at school was Harbour Hotel, a radio soap opera written by Lee Dunne that gave a good sense of everyday life. The graininess of listening to the show on medium wave added to the experience. Dunne wrote each episode a bit like Roshomon, with each character talking about an event (like an argument) from their perspective. RTÉ’s obituary also focuses on Dunne’s social commentary literature that was banned by the Irish government in the 1960s through to the mid-1970s. Lee Dunne like James Plunkett wrote about the everyman. Plunkett’s work differed from Lee Dunne in that it had more of a socialist tenor to the content. Lee Dunne had particular success with his 1969 novel Goodbye To The Hill, more Ireland related content here.

Beauty

Shu Uemura to Exit Korean Market | BoFJapanese beauty brand Shu Uemura has announced its intention to pull out of the South Korean market in September after 16 years in the country. Some local media reports have attributed the L’Oréal Group-owned cosmetic brand’s exit at least partly to ongoing boycotts of Japanese products by Korean consumers since 2019, but in a statement, L’Oréal attributed the Korea exit to its “plan to maximise our brand portfolio. As a global company, [we] periodically review our brand portfolio based on demand from the local market.” Shu Uemura currently has more than 70 points of sale in Korea. – the level of competition in Korea is probably too fierce

Five China market strategies that domestic brands do better than foreign brands | Daxue Consulting – I would add western brands rather than all foreign brands

Consumer behaviour

NewNew™ on the App Store – god this dark. In th sage words of Matt Muir – how else do you describe a new app, with significant VC funding, whose main purpose seems to be to allow ‘creators’ (we’ll come back to that word) to earn money from their ‘fans’ in exchange for letting said ‘fans’ determine the course of their life, in some sort of modern, ersatz version of The Diceman?

How China’s online hate campaigns work – Protocol — The people, power and politics of techIn today’s China, a nationalist campaign involves something far more complex than paying people to post scripted messages parroting Beijing’s line. The government has mastered the craft of influencing people’s genuine emotions and having these ordinary users do the trolling and doxxing — for free. Oftentimes, this means appealing to misogyny or chauvinism, something that virtually guarantees more clicks. Many videos and articles attacking Xu have tried to paint her personal life as promiscuous and delinquent. Web users have frequently called Xu a “female Han traitor,” a dog whistle that conflates concepts of chastity and national loyalty

Europe

Why Can’t Europe Cope With the Coronavirus? – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceEU states are too integrated to manage the crisis separately and not integrated enough to do so collectively, an inability to make rapid decisions, and a breakdown of trust between governments and the governed

Ethics

P&G reportedly testing Chinese workaround to Apple’s privacy changes | Marketing Dive – I find it hard to believe. if they’re seriously considering this, P&G have their head up their ass on ethics. They don’t need to do highly targeted marketing because Byron Sharp. This just looks like a waste of money

Finance

How China structures loans to become Africa’s “preferred” lender — Quartz AfricaChinese contracts contain broad confidentiality clauses that stop borrowers from sharing details about the contracts, or sometimes even the fact that they exist. And with a confidentiality clause in every contract in the dataset since 2014, the contracts had become more secretive over time. Most of the clauses commit the borrowing countries not to disclose any of the contract terms or related information, unless required by law.

Hong Kong

The Rise and Decline of Hong Kong – From the British Colonial Era to the Chinese Communist Takeover | The Greater China Journal 

Hong Kong’s electoral changes: the Communist Party is taking over | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – good summary of the different structures and challenges in the new Hong Kong ‘electoral’ system

Hong Kong’s elites should think about an exit strategy – Nikkei AsiaThe most serious concern for Hong Kong’s elites is the impact on their interests if China’s economic integration plan is fully implemented. Hong Kong’s tycoons may see this plan as a great opportunity and believe that their connections on the mainland will help them. But they may be in for a rude shock. Beijing wants to integrate Hong Kong’s economy not to enrich its tycoons, but to make the city’s economic future even more dependent on the motherland. In this process, Beijing would understandably give preference to mainland players, in particular state-owned enterprises, at the expense of Hong Kong’s businesses. – this covers all the reasons why I think Jardine’s pivot to Indonesia is smarter than Swire doubling down on mainland China

Ideas

Zhang Baijia: Reflections on China’s Research on Frontiers and Relations with Neighboring States | 高大伟 David Cowhig’s Translation BlogHard intelligence is specific information; soft intelligence is the understanding that makes possible the interpretation of hard intelligence. I found this differentiation fascinating delineating information and knowledge

Information security

Israel Reportedly Behind Cyberattack That Caused Blackout at Iran Nuclear Facility – reminds me of the Tehran show on Apple+ about Israeli spec ops and hackers in Iran

Apple Mail Zero-Click Security Vulnerability Allows Email Snooping | Threatpost 

Media

Cannabis streaming service sets debut date, program slate – The Third M – MM+M – Medical Marketing and Media – High Times meets NBC. What’s next Crypto News Network for the bitcoin and NFT fans?

Retailing

The great British retail reopening | Vogue BusinessThe 12 April reopening of all physical stores in the UK is an occasion for optimism, but it’s heavily laced with caution. “The big question is how much of the massive increase in total share of spend will online retain?” says Richard Hyman, veteran UK retail analyst. His rough estimate, he says, is about 85 per cent. “If online hangs on to a material portion of spend, then the cost of selling something in a shop will have gone up significantly.”

Covid’s effect on Rodeo Dr, Oxford St, and Russell St retail closures — Quartz – worthwhile looking at for its retail information and its beautiful interactive design

Technology

Job search | Amazon.jobs – interesting job ads. Amazon is looking for a lot of product designers and software engineers to work on visual search and augmented reality as part of the ‘next generation of shopping innovation’ – I found this via the ex-Yahoo! employees groups on LinkedIn. Yahoo! had a large contingent of people working in areas such as image and video search that would be of interest to Amazon now. The team is based just down the road from Sunnyvale in Palo Alto