Ged Carroll

Month: May 2022

  • Oscar Zeta Acosta + more stuff

    Oscar Zeta Acosta

    If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a passing familiarity with the work of Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson’s most famous work Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas was a semi-biographical work that told the trip of Thompson and hispanic rights activist Oscar Zeta Acosta to go from east Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Oscar Zeta Acosta was an advocate for the rights of what would be now called the LatinX community in the United States. He was a lawyer by profession and respected member of his community. I don’t want to give anything further away about the story that led up the disappearance of Oscar Zeta Acosta.

    Londongrad

    The Economist have done a documentary on how London was so popular as a destination for laundering their money and reputation. London has built up a reputation for where oligarchs from Russia and other countries and former government officials go to invest and live.

    They will often have their significant others live in London, while they act as an astronaut partner. The rationale for such an arrangement may vary. One may wish to protect your family from a badly behaving state. This would be similar to the why so many Hong Kongers had their families live in Canada from the late 1960s onward. Even Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing had his family in Vancouver.

    A darker reason would be the trend toward kleptocracy which has flourished across the former Soviet bloc. The trend has become so pronounced that central and west London has been nicknamed Londongrad. Along with the oligarchs has flourished a range of professional and personal services to cater for their every need. But the oligarchs wouldn’t have come if a services framework didn’t exist in Londongrad. The legal and financial services were built up over time to benefit the aristocracy and then attract overseas capital post-war, most notably ‘Euro dollars’ from petrostates and the beneficiaries of globalisation. Londongrad built on these foundations.

    To give an idea where some of the money that comes into Londongrad; look no further than the Russian frontlines in the Ukrainian war.

    Samsung Bespoke

    Cheil Worldwide have done a new film for Samsung’s Bespoke range of refrigerators and freezers. It’s got a huge amount of craft in the production. Check it out.

    Shin Ultraman

    Ultraman is getting the modernisation treatment that Godzilla had a few years ago. It’s now in the cinema in Japan and here’s the trailer. While the film might be more polished than the original, that doesn’t mean that the creators didn’t know a good thing when they saw it and kept the Showa-era vibe of the original Ultraman film typography.

    Michael Caine on class

    I am a big fan of Caine’s performance in The Ipcress File, a film adaptation of Len Deighton’s novel of the same name. Much of the rest of his work leaves me cold. I came across this clip where Michael Caine talks about class, which I thought was more relevant today than it was when it was originally recorded. Michael Caine has since gone on to support the party of the establishment which makes his earlier class consciousness ironic.

  • Glossier + more things

    Glossier

    What’s next for Glossier as founder Emily Weiss steps down after eight years | Vogue Business – Glossier is famous for popularising millennial pink in its stores, its zip-lock bubble pouch and for pioneering everyday beauty in an industry obsessed with perfection. However, signs of internal shifts began earlier this year when the beauty brand laid off nearly one-third of its staff, according to an internal email obtained by Modern Retail. It also enlisted the singer and Gen Z favourite Olivia Rodrigo to promote the brand in April, after years of relying on its own community. There have been other bumps in the road. Two years ago the sub-brand Glossier Play closed, and the brand was also called out by former store employees who made allegations about racist behaviour and a toxic work culture. Glossier publicly apologised. – for many marketers in the beauty and personal care space Glossier was the poster child of a ‘new way’ of brand building. It looks as if it wasn’t the new way at all and its had to pivot to more conventional means.

    To the curl of your lips In the center of eclipse

    Glossier is moving from scrappy start-up to a mainstream beauty brand. Will Weiss stepping back mean that Glossier will be up for sale?

    Consumer behaviour

    How Labour lost the Indian vote in the local elections – New Statesman – new Indian immigrants have more in common with Rishi Sunak than with the 1970s East Africans. Born to a wealthy, upper-caste Hindu family, this immigrant is likely to have attended one of India’s most prestigious private schools, aspiring to attend an Ivy League university. They were raised by domestic help who cooked and cleaned for them. Sunak embodies the Indian upper middle class. He understands the new wealthy India. Hell, he’s a card-carrying member of the new wealthy India: the Stanford educated son-in-law of one of the biggest Indian tech families, born to middle-class Indian doctors. This means that when Labour draws attention to Sunak’s elitist background, it makes him more appealing to both Indian demographics. He achieved the social mobility the 20th-century immigrants hoped for for their children, and he is a member of the family that encapsulates the new elite India

    Economics

    All the reasons why so many near-retirees are going back to work — Quartz – the pandemic may have been an even bigger setback to this age group than the current data suggests. There may be many older workers who want to return to work right now and are facing well-established obstacles, such as age discrimination, that make it much harder for an older employee to be rehired after leaving or losing a job, Davis suggests. Going back to work after retirement? It’s complicated. The data also don’t indicate how many of the people who went back to work would have preferred to retire, but couldn’t—a sign that the system could be failing them

    Ethics

    Microsoft Exec Accused of Watching VR Porn in Front of Employees | Futurism 

    Is British science aiding and abetting the Chinese human organ trade? – Last month, for example, a government bill was passed banning British citizens from travelling overseas to purchase an organ. Accompanying this awareness is a growing unease in western academia. Eminent medics are starting to look back uncomfortably on decades of “constructive engagement” with the Chinese medical establishment – those all-expenses-paid trips to lecture budding surgeons, and the profitable arrangements to train batches of them in the west. Meanwhile editors of academic journals are scouring their back issues for too-good-to-be-true studies on organ transplants, that may have arisen from experimentation on human guinea pigs in places such as Xinjiang. In October last year a world-renowned Australian transplant doctor, Professor Russell Strong, called on all Chinese surgeons to be banned from western hospitals to prevent them using the skills they pick up there in the organ harvesting market. Now, a leading human rights body has warned medical equipment manufacturers – among others – that they might be prosecuted if their kit is found to be used in the illegal Chinese trade. – this is going to expand areas of decoupling

    The Oppression of Uyghurs in China: VW Under Fire for Ongoing Operations in Xinjiang – DER SPIEGEL which was published in concert with this opinion piece Beijing’s Human Rights Violations: It’s Time for German Executives to Reexamine Their Ties to China – DER SPIEGEL 

    Uganda: DER SPIEGEL Reporting Leads Unilever to Stop Sexist Marketing Campaign – DER SPIEGEL

    Finance

    The war on ‘woke capitalism’ | Financial Times 

    FMCG

    Unilever’s Samir Singh: Sustainability shouldn’t burden consumers with guilt or expense | Campaign Asia – existential threats to the personal care business wouldn’t just come from being innovation laggards, but could also come from feisty D2C brands or strong local rivals eating into market share. Here, Singh is more concerned about one over the other. “Despite the noise, D2C brands have made no impact on market share charts in the personal care business,” he contends. “You will hear a lot about them for the first six months to a year, (then) they will peak and then in two or three years, they tend to disappear.” Instead, it is strong homegrown local brands that worry Singh more. He points out that across categories ranging from deodorants to skin care and across markets ranging from India to Indonesia, Unilever has felt local threats to its storied global brands. These brands have been able to compete on price, innovation, distribution and brand recall. “While we have been winning with our global names, these local brands have taken market share from us previously,” he admits. – this looks like headstone for the DTC CPG boom, other comments about sustainability are interesting as well

    ideas

    Putin Against History | Foreign Affairs 

    A Forecasting Model Used by the CIA Predicts a Surprising Turn in U.S.-China Relations – POLITICO – this seems to ignore political dogma and ego

    The delusion of a global democratic rebirth through war – Responsible Statecraft 

    Innovation

    Japanese AI device reads stories to your kid with your voice, even if you’ve never read them【Vid】 | SoraNews24 – what’s interesting is how the parent’s voice is replicated to create a ‘deep fake’ audio story track

    Japan

    Sony’s strategy stymied by shortages | Financial Times 

    Ideas to boost Japanese growth (Part 1) – by Noah Smith 

    Luxury

    Chanel profits skyrocket 171% on price hikes, Americas gains | Vogue Business – Chanel famously increased the prices of its iconic handbags last year (the small Classic Flap bag rose by an average 21 per cent in 2020 and a further 30 per cent in 2021, according to Jefferies analyst Flavio Cereda) and said a twice-year price adjustment is the norm for the brand. Price increases “depend on product categories and countries because it depends if the currency in one country has moved in a direction. There is not a single pricing decision which has been made in January. Usually, we revise, we adjust prices when we have to, twice a year.”

    Marketing

    Hot Wheels releases a remote-controlled wheelchair that flips & spins – is this a new form of brand purpose, or will Hot Wheels have its 21st century equivalent of the ‘Joey Deacon’ effect?

    Security

    These Chinese super drones are capable of tracking humans in swarms – Tech in Asia 

    EXCLUSIVE Russian hackers are linked to new Brexit leak website, Google says | Reuters – interesting that the attack was on ProtonMail based conversations

    China military must be able to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites if they threaten national security: scientists | South China Morning Post – usual destroy everything we don’t control mentality from China

    China’s Uyghurs: Hacked Data Shows Ethnic Abuse in Xinjiang Camps – Bloomberg – what’s interesting about this is that China beefed up encryption standards in 2018, which is apparently why there weren’t more recent records

    Software

    Joint Venture Between High-Tech Rheinmetall AG and DEMALOG, Germany’s Biggest Biometrics Company – Soldier Systems Daily – The strategic objective is to integrate biometric technology, artificial intelligence software, and digitization solutions in three different areas: driver monitoring, security, and industry. For Rheinmetall, the joint venture marks an important step in the transformation to digitization technology and expanding into driver monitoring solutions. Furthermore, the new joint venture enhances the Düsseldorf-based technology group’s future-oriented diversification into biometrics applications geared to the security sector and industry. The move also adds to its existing digitization and software expertise. Importantly, the partnership reinforces Rheinmetall’s capabilities in five strategic technology clusters: automation, sensors, digitization, alternative mobility, and artificial intelligence

    Web of no web

    UAE Official Says Murder Should Be Illegal in the Metaverse – I wonder what the impact would be for games designers

    Gucci Town Lands on Roblox With Activities and Shopping Experiences – Robb Report 

    Opinion: The metaverse doesn’t look as disruptive as it should, it looks ordinary – here’s why | University College London

    Virtual clubbing points to future profits from the metaverse | FT – Hybe, the agency behind K-pop band BTS, was hit by a 98 per cent plunge in sales from its core live concert business in 2020 as tours were cancelled. But total annual revenues and operating profit still rose over a third, as it was quick to offer VR concerts and content. With such digital content repurposed at a fraction of the cost of live shows, operating margins rose to nearly a fifth higher than pre-pandemic levels. CJ ENM, which started using the latest VR and augmented reality technology for its virtual concerts in 2020, has also enjoyed a boost to content sales. These have since risen steadily, more than doubling in the latest quarter, as did operating profits from its music division. For Sony, sales from its music segment rose a fifth in the year to March

    Singapore metaverse firm bags $36.8m in Sequoia-led round 

    Making the metaverse – Smart2.0 – its odd, or disingenuous the way Meta is outlining an open metaverse rather than a walled garden, rather like a turkey voting for Christmas

  • China evacuation

    ‘China evac‘ or China evacuation is something that I have been hearing more about from my network. Its less dramatic in it sounds in some respects. It isn’t an immediate bailout like the fall of Saigon in 1975.

    China evacuation in this case is about businesses moving processes and supply chains out of the country to more stable and friendly environments. This has resulted in net capital outflows from China.

    US Embassy April 29, 1975

    China’s policy of lockdowns and Ukraine have brought a ‘China evac’ to the fore in terms of public discussions, but its actually been on the the minds of business people and think tanks for far longer. The reality of a china evacuation for businesses is more like apocryphal tale of a slow boiled frog.

    The China of Xi Jingping isn’t the China of 20 years ago when it ascended to joining the WTO. China has an unusual concentration of direct and indirect government funding in business. The state uses this funding to direct industry. In some respects this is similar to the development model deployed by Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The difference is that the Chinese industry has kept up this investment for both military and economic purposes – what’s known as military civil fusion.

    A second aspect was forced technology transfer that happened. And ongoing industrial espionage on a scale that has been unprecedented in world history to date. China now leads in certain technological areas that it intends to use for diplomatic coercion and military advantage.

    Xi Jingping is looking to direct the economy more under the government and looking to remove any dependencies on western countries – including foreign companies doing business in China.

    Why China evac now?

    In order to understand the forces driving the consideration of China evacuation, one has to go back to the Initial incentives to invest in China.

    Initial incentives

    Stability

    The government was literally prepared to crush dissenting voices. The government controls the labour unions and isn’t afraid to use force. Home markets and stakeholders shamefully ignored June 4th, but the Hong Kong protests and Xinjiang have brought the dark side of stability to the fore. Many brands are having to choose between China, or their western stakeholders and customers – they have straddled both sides but a China evacuation is only a matter of time.

    China’s market size

    The size of the local Chinese market. However this is better for some markets than others. KFC benefited for a while. As have luxury goods manufacturers. FMCG and technology brands have seen them ‘make a market’ for local brands to then come in and fill, pushing the pioneering multinationals to the sidelines. In the meantime their western market middle class customer base was declining due to globalisation.

    Secondly, the spending power of a Chinese middle class on a per person basis is way lower than in the west. Just because there is an increase in middle class, doesn’t mean that there will be a like-for-like spending boost like one would get in the west. In absolute terms, incomes and tax are both lower than the UK, but then there isn’t much of a social welfare safety net and no health insurance.

    China’s regulatory environment

    China is skilled in the use of non-tariff barriers to punish businesses and countries. This skill was used previously to ‘compel’ foreign direct investment in order to sell within the Chinese market.

    Changing macro-environment

    COVID-19 demonstrated the fragility of global supply chains with China at the centre of them. China’s foreign policy stance has forced companies and governments to ask what would happen when they get into the kind of conflict with China that is currently happening with Russia.

    China like Russia has maximised its actions in the grey zone so far. It is only a matter of time when open conflict happens. Whether its over North Korea, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, military action against the Philippines, Australia or Japan.

    Policy thinkers are also conscious of the way China wilfully acts against western aligned countries with less and less regard to the mutually beneficial relationship that they currently have.

    What are the limitations of leaving China?

    China’s rise has led to a catastrophic wilful destruction of capability by multinational companies in other countries. What made sense from a short term shareholder value perspective, was strategically deadly for their home countries. (The only bigger bit of corporate criminality would be Lee Raymond’s time at Exxon which excessively aggregated climate change, despite the early work on alternative energy done under the likes of previous CEO John Kenneth Jamieson.)

    So China is the single source for a lot of products, and the more one relies on it, the worse things get in terms of doing a China evacuation:

    • 20 percent of American cars by value are now Chinese components
    • Much of the world’s vitamin C production and most of the world’s precursors for drugs manufacturing come from China
    • 90 percent of the world’s rare earth metals that are key for everything from wireless chips to battery technology comes from China
    • We could rebuild the plants, but rebuilding the expertise base will be harder and take longer. Its so hard that policy experts are looking at friend shoring; working with partners to move production where it makes the most sense from an economic competitive advantage perspective

    One of the reasons why this all happened is that businesses believed you could design products without having to understand deeply how the products are made. But the situation has now moved from CEOs being misguided, to being willing agents of the Chinese state. In foreign countries from the UK to Australia political and business elites have been willing participants against their countries own interests.

    Businesses often don’t realise when the gap that they are trying to straddle has become too wide. Examples of this include law firms in Hong Kong and clothing brands Nike and H&M. Professional services firms have actively looked to profit from the deteriorating relationship between China and the west.

    Finally executives that have built their careers on saying that China is the future are emotionally, intellectually and personally invested in staying put rather than doing a China evacuation. Examples of this would be companies like Apple, Swire and HSBC.

    Policy implications of a China evacuation

    Dealing with the enemies within

    China’s state capture of a country’s elite is the single most problematic aspect of preparing for, and dealing with a widespread China evacuation of business functions and processes. The UK and Australia have made baby steps in this regard. The challenge will be realigning the incentives of the business elites away from short term stakeholder value to a longer term view that takes into account stakeholders and national expectations. (There is a certain irony in this when you realise that it was the short termist shareholder value crowd who bankrolled Sir David Sterling’s efforts to cling on to the British empire by his fingertips.) It will mean unwinding long tentacles sown by the United Work Front and Chinese state media without alienating Asian minority communities, including effective policing actions against operators as diverse as social media influencers and organised criminals.

    Understanding the limitations

    Policy makers will have to understand the difference between what’s possible, all be it painful and what can’t be done at the present time. This means navigating between the nay-saying short-termist interests of business elites and reality of operations. Certain things will take decades to reshore as part of a China evacuation of business precesses. Expertise and knowledge will need to be learned, plants built on the rubble of bankrupt retail parks

    Building effective defences

    Any sign of concerted China evacuation will see a dramatic Chinese response. Countries would need to learn lessons from the experiences of Norway, Lithuania and Australia who have incurred responses from China in the past. At the present time the European Union is failing its members in this regard.

    Long term planning

    Maintaining secure supply lines and economic growth requires long term planning. The financialisation of western economies rewards short term opportunism and there lies a fundamental tension in how things are done. There could have been no China without the asset strippers of the 1960s onwards and a narrow interpretation of ‘shareholder value as god‘ mantra.

  • Davis Polk Asia + more things

    Davis Polk Asia

    Davis Polk Asia chair withdraws from Hong Kong security law forum | Financial Times – Guessing that Davis Polk Asia didn’t do a thorough opportunity cost analysis before agreeing to participate in the Hong Kong National Security Law Forum. An alternative hypothesis that I have heard about Davis Polk Asia could be due to being really screwed globally and will ANYTHING for some billings. Even if David Polk Asia really desperate, I can’t imagine that there will be that much upside in the greater China market and maybe some backlash in the law firm’s other international and US domestic offices. The backlash happened as soon as the FT published news of their forthcoming participation. I can also imagine that the subsequent Davis Polk Asia withdrawal will cause blowback with mainland clients and government contacts. The smart play for Davis Polk Asia would have been to decline the place in the first instance. It is even more surprising when David Polk Asia could have looked at Mayer Brown pulling away from representing Hong Kong University last year was a case study in likely outcomes. Given that one would want solid wise heads in the senior staff of a law office rather than status seeking sycophants, the Davis Polk Asia chairman Mr Rogers doesn’t look like a credit to his firm. Discretion might have been the better part of valour in this case.

    Branding

    ‘We Love Winning, But Not At All Costs’: Asics On Offering Athletes Mental Health Aid | The Drum – I was chatting with a contact about the Asics positioning overall that this manifests and its an exceptionally clever reframe around a ‘sound mind in a sound body’ – its very Japanese and yet very now. Its a space that New Balance, Saucony, Newton etc left wide open for them

    The Elizabeth line: Grimshaw’s line-wide Crossrail design – fantastic article on the design language of Crossrail. Its architecture its branding, its product and service design all together in one package

    China

    Shanghai lockdown exposes global supply chain strains | Financial Times – the Port of Los Angeles, for example, is monitoring data from China on energy consumption, traffic patterns and pollution, to understand how busy the country’s factories are so it can prepare for the volumes of cargo to come. “I’m on the phone most evenings with friends . . . in Shanghai telling me what’s happening on the ground,” – interesting how they’re having to rely on abstract data

    As Q1 results disappoint, should brands look beyond China? | Advertising | Campaign Asia – brands were able to offset these losses thanks to the strength in North America and Europe. Aeffe, the parent company of Mochino, nearly tripled its net income in the three month period, as Europe (which represents almost one-third of its total revenue) jumped 37.5% thanks to Germany and the UK. Tapestry shares even climbed on May 12 after it posted that sales in North America rose 22% year-on-year, fully offsetting mid-teens decline in China. These two regions will be crucial as China slowly recovers from its worst Covid wave since 2020. Although the mainland is on track to become the world’s largest luxury market by 2025, the US is still in top spot, accounting for 31% of the global market (China accounts for 21%). As such, it is important for brands to continue building traction in North America and Europe to cushion against near-term losses in Asia

    China Brief: Expanding State Power Still Tops Xi Jinping’s Agenda – The published speech shows how much of Xi’s economic thinking is about control, tied to what he sees as a necessary expansion of government power. The speech frames China’s problems as coming down to the “reckless expansion of capital,” or private industry, which can only be curbed by expanding the CCP’s power. That idea relates to one of Xi’s favorite terms from last year: “common prosperity,” achieved via the redistribution of wealth. Publishing the 2021 speech now may be an attempt to revitalize that language. Other Chinese officials, such as Premier Li Keqiang, are focused primarily on addressing economic issues, but party power still tops Xi’s agenda. One part of the speech may seem incompatible with its profession of socialist values: how conservative it sounds about welfare. Xi explicitly states that “common prosperity” isn’t welfare. His words also suggest a fear of overpromising what the government can deliver, but they also echo an idea I’ve heard from rich and powerful people in China—that people living in democracies never vote to cut welfare benefits because the public is lazy and entitled

    Consumer behaviour

    “Macho pink” menswear takes over in China | Vogue Business – “Macho pink” can be seen as a kind of “rebellion”, however, this rebellion currently remains limited to product categories considered mainstream for men, such as e-sports, sneakers and electronics. As male consumers in China put more emphasis on self-expression, this is validated to some extent by pink goods. – this reminds me of the bold neon colours of 1980s skiwear brands like Nevica. More on the social impact here: Millennial Pink Begone, Enter the Age of Hot Pink Fury | High Sobriety 

    Study: games and video-watching correlate with kids getting smarter, social media a wash | Boing Boing

    Taking the pulse of the US consumer | McKinsey and more here from GlobalWebIndex: How The Cost Of Living Crisis Is Affecting Consumer Spending | GWI 

    Culture

    Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Anime Comes to Netflix Geeked Week

    Liberals Should Be Worried About the Conservative Comedy Scene – POLITICO – Conservative humorists aren’t merely catching up to their liberal counterparts in terms of reach and popularity. They’ve already caught them — and, in some cases, surpassed them, even as the liberal mainstream has continued to write conservative comedy off as a contradiction in terms. “[Liberals] are ceding ideological territory in the culture wars to the right via comedy,” Marx told me, noting that once-beloved liberal comedians like Stewart are struggling to find their footing in the treacherous landscape of post-Trump humor. “This thing that we thought we have owned for the last 20 years has been leaking, and the borders are slowly getting shifted.”

    Design

    Bamboo scaffolding: Why does Hong Kong still use it in construction? | Goldthread 

    Economics

    Greedflation, gouging and price controls – by Noah Smith 

    Advertising percentage of GDP – The Creative Industries 

    Americans Don’t Miss Manufacturing — They Miss Unions | FiveThirtyEight 

    Russia Is Losing Access to Imports – by Matthew C. Klein 

    Biden’s China strategy cannot work with weapons alone | Financial Times 

    Subprime Car Loan, Lease Defaults Hit All-Time High in February | Jalopnik – this has been a long time coming

    Joe Biden waters down Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to win more support | Financial Times 

    Energy

    Fraunhofer sketches roadmap for solid-state battery c… eeNews Automotive 

    Toyota further expands hydrogen ecosystem – eeNews Automotive – Europe needs to increase its commitment to a hydrogen economy

    Ethics

    Company Reviews on Glassdoor: Petty Complaints or Signs of Potential Misconduct? – HBS Working Knowledge – Whether it’s Theranos and its fraudulent blood testing technology, Wells Fargo and its fake financial accounts, or Volkswagen and its bogus emissions data, a whistleblower eventually comes forward to expose the behavior, and executives are held accountable. “But what you start to realize is that the problems that have been uncovered have been going on for a very long time,” says Dennis Campbell, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Far from being just a few bad apples, most business improprieties occur within a widespread culture of bad behavior—or at least, a lot of people looking the other way as misconduct is taking place, he says.

    Ideas

    The i-Frame and the s-Frame: How Focusing on Individual-Level Solutions Has Led Behavioral Public Policy Astray by Nick Chater, George Loewenstein :: SSRN  – worthwhile reading in concert with this – What nudge theory got wrong | Financial Times 

    Putin plays his asshole card | I, Cringely – interesting post on the million plus Ukrainian hostage situation in Russia

    Japan

    Japan’s living standards are too low – by Noah Smith 

    Korea

    Depression on the Rise Among Young Men – The Chosun Ilbo 

    Koreans Think AI Is the Future – The Chosun Ilbo – 1/ artificial intelligence 2/ robotics 3/ future mobility 4/ hydrogen fuel 5/ energy 6/ biotechnology 7/ aerospace 8/ new materials 9/ batteries 10/ semiconductors – skews to Korea’s current strengths in semiconductors, hydrogen fuel cells and robotics

    Luxury

    LVMH-owned watchmaker Tag Heuer to accept crypto payments | Vogue Business – terrible timing given the bear market in crypto at the moment. Its also part of the odder financial aspects happening in the watch sector. From companies going vertical into the pre-owned marketplace to Breitling adopting a car lease type model for watches

    Marketing

    Marketers to face challenges as the world of internet enters into a new Cookie-less phase; What measures has the advertising industry taken? / Digital Information World – looking at this data SMS is very undervalued as people are more likely to keep their mobile number while social and email are more transitory

    Marketers, investing in market research is not superfluous – there is the big initial deep dive that happens when a new CMO arrives or a new product or market is contemplated. Second, there is the lesser but more common annual research that updates the organisation on the market, its segments and associated behaviour that feeds annual market planning. Finally, there is the more occasional inquiry into a specific micro issue that springs up. A pricing problem, a sudden reduction in market share or some other occasional issue that demands customer insight to guide management action

    How chaotic accounting engulfed Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital empire | Business | The Sunday Times 

    Materials

    World’s first commercial 200mm VCSEL wafer ships – eeNews Europe 

    Media

    Six Shifts Changing the Future of Media | Bain & Company 

    Online

    Hong Kong Considers Blocking Telegram Messaging App, Local Paper Says – Bloomberg – Hong Kong authorities are deliberating whether to curtail public access to the messaging service Telegram, the Sing Tao Daily reported, potentially reviving fears the former British colony is moving closer toward Beijing-style internet controls. The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data is considering invoking regulations for the first time to restrict access to a platform it found to be rampant with doxxing, the local newspaper reported Tuesday. The widespread doxxing — or online exposure of sensitive and personal data — was aimed at government officials as well as citizens, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people.

    Security

    Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society China’s presence in NHS supply chains

    Iraq balks at greater Chinese control of its oilfields | Reuters 

    Wireless eavesdroppers can hack 6G signal with DIY me… Smart2.0 

    Chinese Hackers Tried to Steal Russian Defense Data, Report Says – The New York Times – The emails landed on March 23 in the inboxes of scientists and engineers at several of Russia’s military research and development institutes, purportedly sent by Russia’s Ministry of Health. They carried a subject line that offered seemingly tantalizing information about a “list of persons under U.S. sanctions for invading Ukraine.” But the emails were actually sent by state-sponsored hackers in China seeking to entice their Russian targets to download and open a document with malware, according to a new report to be released Thursday by the Israeli-American cybersecurity firm Check Point… The Chinese campaign targeted Russian institutes that research airborne satellite communications, radar and electronic warfare

    Taiwan

    EU to upgrade trade ties with Taiwan as China warns Brussels ‘not to gamble on this issue’ | South China Morning Post 

    Telecoms

    EETimes – Lockheed Counts on Intel, Nvidia to Connect Defense Systems 

    Web of no web

    BujiBui makes 3D digital twins accessible anywhere | DigiTimes 

    P&G is Designing for the Future: How the Metaverse is Changing Consumer Engagement 

    Wireless

    South Korea to start testing 5G-V2X projects in 2Q23 

  • Special branch & other stuff

    I think my interest in this vintage TV series Special Branch comes from a couple of places:

    • Sharing Mike Herron’s subversive books, Apple TV adaption and audio books with friends and my Dad
    • Sharing my love of John LeCarre with friends during lockdown

    Special Branch was before my life time. The episodes start very much in the vein of a Le Carre or Len Deighton-type story. Later episodes were more human interest focused including an investigation of a religious cult. However one episode touches on the often overlooked post-war history of the British security services and military combatting Cypriot desire for independence.

    Those with a keen eye will notice Bernard Hepton who played Toby Esterhase in the BBC TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy & Smiley’s People playing a Soviet-era Ukrainian colonel in this episode.

    You can see more episodes of Special Branch on YouTube here.

    Genesis on luxury

    This is an interesting event that Genesis took part in for marketing purposes. The tone of voice on the session was more about the ‘business of luxury’ rather than encouraging luxury consumption. It’s trying in a way that Lexus didn’t need to. Lexus let their engineering do the talking, by comparison luxury and fashion is something that Mercedes and BMW have increasingly lent into.

    There is also no focus on sport in the way that BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Infiniti and Lexus have had.

    Lights and shadows

    A lovely collection of video footage showing light and shadow views in Japan. A good deal of it is the the same locations shot at different times of the day. There is some b-roll, TV and film footage mixed in for good measure.

    Mysterious circles in the Sahara

    My guess when I first saw this was oil exploration. I had worked in the oil industry before I went to university and heard the upstream and exploration adventures of older colleagues. This documentary is a fascinating journey to find out the truth and the limits of the internet and assumptions about modern industry practices not being a good guide of past practices. Without any further introduction I will leave you to this mystery of the Algerian desert.

    Calculus on Pornhub

    Taiwanese mathematics tutor puts calculus lessons on Pornhub. Attracts audience with attractive female assistants who clean the board. His rationale of taking his content to a less crowded platform can’t be faulted though.