Month: April 2022

  • Naked power politics + more things

    Naked power politics is a challenge to the post cold war consensus. Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, like Ethiopia’s invasion of Tigray are two examples of naked power politics in action. Russia’s naked power politics approach isn’t new and was something that the Financial Times and others had been talking about for at least a decade…

  • Cockneycide

    I saw a LinkedIn post being shared about Cockneycide – the decline of speakers of London’s traditional working class English dialect. Or as it was put to me: Cockneycide describes conscious or unconscious acts that wilfully deny the existence of a cultural group. Disclaimer – I consider it to be an inappropriate use of the…

  • Assembly process video + more stuff

    Porsche 911 GT3 assembly process video I am a sucker for a manufacturing assembly process video. Over time I have shared videos showcasing Nokia’s largely automated smartphone manufacturing lines that they had before the Microsoft disaster and old time metalworking archive footage as assembly process videos. So I had to share this timelapse assembly process…

  • John Lee + more things

    China’s Choice for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Reveals Its Own Insecurity – The Diplomat – I thought that John Lee was likely to be Carrie Lam‘s successor when he was appointed her deputy last June. As others have observed, John Lee looked most likely to be the person in charge during vast parts of Ms…

  • SORM + more things

    When Nokia Pulled Out of Russia, a Vast Surveillance System Remained – The New York Times – Nokia said this month that it would stop its sales in Russia and denounced the invasion of Ukraine. But the Finnish company didn’t mention what it was leaving behind: equipment and software connecting the government’s most powerful tool…

  • Moviedrome

    Alex Cox One of the cultural things that most defined the 1980s for me was the Moviedrome series of films on BBC 2. Late on a Sunday night, audiences were introduced to films by film director and academic Alex Cox. Cox had a singular vision and an encyclopaedic knowledge that he used to showcase the…