Finance is a really odd section for me to have. I don’t come from a finance background, I have no interest in fin-tech. Yet it makes its appearance here on this blog.
When thinking about this category, I decided to reflect on why its here. It’s usually where curated content sits, rather than my own ideas.
The reality of life in the west is that everything has become financialised. As I write this as people think about web 3.0, they are thinking about payment systems first and working about utility later. This implies that the open web we know won’t be part of the metaverse in terms of ideas or ethos.
Instead of economic growth consumer spending depends on different ways of creating credit. Its no accident that delayed payments finance company Klarna is the biggest thing in European e-commerce at the time of writing this page.
Back when I started writing we were heading into the financial crisis of 2008, the knock on effects of that could still be felt a dozen years later and was a contributing factor to Brexit and Trump victories. The ‘occupy’ movement was catalysed by the financial crisis and then turned into something else. For instance it became a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
We had the implosion of financial brands like Lehman Brothers and the Royal Bank of Scotland. This created a lack of trust in business, the media and the government. We are still seeing that play out today, from cryptocurrency to conspiracy theories and a lack of trust by the public in experts.
I miss Tomorrows World as a show. It came from a few points that seem to have changed in UK society
Lord Reith’s original agenda for the BBC to entertain and educate. It made cutting edge research simple and highlighted its potential benefits
A futurism vision in the great and good of society at least, rather than the current viewpoint that we’re all doomed
Now as a society, we no longer know what innovation is. There is no ‘true north’.
Predicting the smart home of 2020
This Tomorrows World programme from 1989 predicts smart home type controls such as Philips Hue bulbs, wireless charging with ‘plug-in pads’, reducing energy consumption and big screen TVs. But there is as much as it gets wrong as well, LCD windows tend to be only use in the swankest offices or high security areas. Our home windows aren’t display screens. Unfortunately we don’t have aerogel as loft insulation due to the inability to make it cheaply via mass production.
One final point that was important was how they talked about consumers having a choice of how smart their home could be. Which showed a real consideration about technological impact that is at odds with smartphones vs. feature phones; or smart TVs vs. ‘dumb’ TVs.
Business
Why Facebook’s Metaverse Is Dead on Arrival | New York magazine – In actuality, Facebook is basically spending $10 billion on a prayer that, in the short run, it might change the conversation. It gives them an opportunity to talk about the meta verse instead of insurrection and teen depression – or that Meta has moved from being a growth company to a value company…
I wasn’t aware of Honey Badger Cummins until a couple of days ago. Cummins was a former professional rugby union player who managed to parley his career into work on television and a professional social media following. Nick Honey Badger Cummins had played 15 times for his country, including the international rugby sevens competition and for top flight clubs in Australia and Japan.
Following his retirement as a professional sportsman, he had appeared in a number of reality television show and gained a following as a travel influencer on social media. His travel influencer status, personality profile in Australia and former rugby sevens career were obvious points of interest for the Hong Kong Tourist Board.
Propaganda
The problem for Honey Badger Cummins is that he’s at the centre of Hong Kong’s campaign to remake its international image. This is after its COVID-19 isolation, 2019 protests with brutal policing actions, the national security law mass imprisonment, crushed media | civil society sectors and the large amount of Hong Kongers who have gone into exile. It isn’t perceived as a ‘straight tourism’ brief, but instead part of a white-washing exercise.
https://youtu.be/rWhrrbUj9Ws
The comments on this video are universally negative in nature at the time of writing this post.
Restaurants and other venues portrayed in the videos have closed down and Cummins flouts what would be now current masking regulations and QRcode health app tracking. This is due to the footage having been shot at the beginning of 2020. Even that timing shows a lack of good judgement by Honey Badger Cummins. But Cummins isn’t the only party to blame.
Poor judgement by Always Human
The Australian creative agency Always Human; which created the videos being used, should be ashamed of themselves in terms of their ethical stance. The content was originally shot in January 2020, when the brutal police crackdown was still fresh in the minds of the general public around the world. Its not a good look for the other agency clients like Asics, GoPro, HP, Nike, Oakley, Under Armour and Volkswagen to be associated with the agency.
Virgin Atlantic pulls out of Hong Kong after 30 years | Telegraph – Virgin Atlantic is pulling out of Hong Kong, scrapping flights and shutting its offices as strict Covid restrictions batter the island’s status as a global financial hub. Ending three decades of flying to Hong Kong, Sir Richard Branson’s airline blamed the closure of Russian airspace as well as the declining profitability of the route. American Airlines and Virgin Australia have also backed away from Hong Kong. I could see other airlines from Europe backing away from Hong Kong due to the disadvantage that Russian airspace provides to them versus Cathay Pacific
Luxury Daily | “A small, concrete happiness”: Why luxury brands in China love cafés – Facing weakening consumer demand, luxury brands are building experiential cafés across China to pursue new consumer touch points and growth areas – it reminds me of the ‘Revlon effect’. During recessions consumers who can’t afford big luxuries like small luxuries like a lipstick or a chocolate bar
Hallyu The Korean Wave is exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Hallyu is actually a contraction of Han ryu which literally means The Korean Wave. Han meaning Korean (so the Korean written language is called Hangul) and ryu meaning wave.
Forgotten War
The exhibition was interesting from a London audience perspective. You have to be a real history buff to know that the Korean war even happened. The olympics put Korea temporarily in western consciousness and then it submerged again. It was only since I started writing this blog that The Korean Wave started to become part of the London zeitgeist, let alone the rest of the country.
Hallyu now
K-pop group Black Pink is now number one in the UK album charts with their sophomore release and there will be at least one Korean option when you open Uber Eats. Korean films and series (usually the most transgressive ones) are popular on Netflix and in arthouse cinemas.
Korean reality
The reality of The Korean Wave is more complex. It was something that was over 50 years in the making, going back at least to the compact that Park Chung-hee made with Korean business leaders at the expense of economic inequality, human rights and labour rights. The Korean Wave was birthed by a traumatic history of authoritarian rule. The Korean Wave wouldn’t have been possible without the economic growth driven by rapid economic growth and industrialisation. This in turn created the flywheel effect as Jim Collins would put it, that helped Korea become a cultural powerhouse as well as an economic one.
The exhibition skims the surface of this complexity, but is stylish and entertaining in nature.
The exhibition is running until February next year.
Expats Shun China Over Covid Policies, Forcing Foreign Firms to Scale Back – WSJ – “companies are even questioning whether it is responsible for them to deploy foreign staff to China when the numerous restrictions mean they are unable to guarantee a basic duty of care for them and their families,” the European business lobby in China said Wednesday in its annual report on the state of business in the country. Many of the chamber’s member companies, multinationals with a longstanding presence in the country, are downsizing, localizing and hiving off their operations in China as the number of Europeans and Britons living there roughly halved from prepandemic levels to around 60,000 in recent months, according to the chamber’s estimate. – the expat infrastructure of schools, services and food built up over decades is withering as foreigners leave. And that is probably seen as a good thing by Xi Jingping, who is looking to de-westernise China
Design
So much in this video about quality, design, sustainability, carbon footprint and the fallacies supporting electric vehicles.
Japan’s biggest K-pop fans might just be senior citizens, survey shows | SoraNews24 -Japan News – Online marketplace service Mercari studied the purchasing habits of its users between September 1 2021 and August 31 2022 to find out what products are most popular for each generation. They discovered that users who reported to be over 50 years old more frequently bought K-pop merchandise than even Gen Z.Despite competing with other popular products like character merchandise, domestic idol goods, and video games, K-pop items were a big seller among every age group. It was the third-most-purchased category for teens and the second for people in their 30s, but as it turns out, it was the most purchased category for people in their fifties and seventies! – this probably tells you a lot about how ageing is changing, not only in Japan, but elsewhere
Tinder just opened a convenience store in Japan, aimed at adults only | SoraNews24 -Japan News – Japanese convenience stores are a much-loved part of everyday life in Japan, where you can get pretty much everything your heart desires at any time of the day or night. Last weekend, however, a new convenience store popped up in Tokyo’s Shibuya district offering something that others don’t usually have in-store: love and romance. Called SwipeMart, the convenience store was run by dating app Tinder, and though it was only open from 16-19 September, it was such a resounding success there are hopes the pop-up will pop up at more locations in the future. Aimed at the over-18 crowd, the convenience store had some great freebies on offer for Tinder members, ranging from a choice of either jocks, socks, or a long-sleeve T-shirt
Sensitivities Rise As Geopolitics Takes Toll On Global Communicators – Richard Edelman penned a blogpost that questioned whether “truth will win out”, amid considerable state-sponsored disinformation activity. Edelman was referring specifically to the Russia/Ukraine conflict, but his column included reference to China’s efforts to influence public opinion. Edelman China blogpost 2022 By the end of the week, that paragraph — which was sourced directly from this WSJ article — had been excised from the post.
EU to consult on making Big Tech contribute to telco network costs | Euronews – The European Union’s executive body will launch a consultation early next year on whether tech giants should bear some of the costs of Europe’s telecoms network, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Friday. Europe’s telecoms operators have long lobbied for a financial contribution from U.S. tech firm’s such as Alphabet’s Google, Meta’s Facebook and Netflix, saying that they use a huge part of the internet traffic
Vetoing Victory – Israel Is Blocking (Military) Aid To Ukraine – Oryx – Israel’s refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine or even permission for other countries to do so sharply contradicts historical aid to Israel, when much of the Western world rallied behind the country when it faced invasions of its own, launching air bridges to keep it supplied, and engaging in blood donation campaigns for Israeli soldiers. Of course, the time that Israel could count on such strong support and sympathy from the Western public is long gone, and the world is unlikely to forget Israel’s inaction and deliberate obstruction of support to Ukraine
The Wall Street Journal explores the history and technology behind Google Maps. The mapping equipment decrease in size over time is particularly interesting to see. The origin of Google Maps starts with a PC app developed the Rasmussen brothers. Jens went on to help found Apple’s map application as well. What quickly becomes apparent when you look at the camera and mapping equipment is the lack of designing for operator comfort. Even these are produced in commercial amounts, the Google Maps camera and LIDAR equipment still looks and feels like an engineering student project. Google Maps is now 17 years old from launch. It spurred a large amount of development on what was termed ‘where 2.0‘.
The impact of where 2.0 in our world today can be seen in local recommendations from Siri on your smartphone to the Institute for the Study of War, which has created the defacto map for what’s happening during the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
Aquafresh fortune-telling
Grey Japan based the campaign on a behavioural insight. During COVID, Japanese toothbrushing habits changed. While brushing your teeth morning and night was common within the Japanese lifestyle prior to COVID; the emphasis has also slowly shifted to brushing in the night and less in the morning.
The campaign asked Aquafresh users to upload a photo on Twitter showing the toothpaste applied to their toothbrush. They would then receive their fortune-telling results from the famous Japanese fortune teller Johnny Kaede based on the colour and shape of the toothpaste on the brush.
Brabus Invicto
German Mercedes tuner and the sultans of bling Brabus have got into the armoured G-Wagen business with the Invicto. I am not quite sure who it will be marketed to since the security sector is already well catered to by the likes of Alpha Armoring. But if you need a team of armed bodyguards to rollout and deploy rapidly on the Kings Road in Chelsea, be reassured Brabus have the gun truck for your ex-special forces types.
The engineering and manufacturing processes that go into making the vehicle is very interesting. It contrasts with the process that Jankel uses for its Land Cruisers. The main challenge I see is the large number of pieces that Brabus has to use compared to Jankel’s hot forming process.
Lyle Goldstein on U.S. Strategic Challenges
Goldstein is a director at a dovish US think tank and formerly taught as the US Naval War College. I don’t necessarily agree with Goldstein since I view the challenges that the west faces more apropos to the Axis powers, rather than the cold war.
Manulife Hong Kong
Manulife insurance for personal injury and health costs is what this ad is using. The actors are famous in the Hong Kong film industry and the ad uses tropes from police and spy films.
Chinese mercenaries have been around longer than the belt and road. You can come across Chinese mercenaries protecting in the border areas of China such as the warlord regions of Myanmar. But now Chinese mercenaries are increasingly linked with the Belt and Road Initiative. China claims that it isn’t building an empire in Africa, across the former Soviet Union and Sri Lanka. Yet all of the private security companies that Chinese mercenaries work for are state owned. The Chinese mercenaries come out of the PLA, the PLAN marines and the PAP. That doesn’t mean that they are well trained or even well disciplined and they exist in a Chinese legal vacuum.
There is more connecting China to its empire with these Chinese mercenaries than there was for the army fighting under Clive of India for the East India Company a few centuries before. Task and Purpose goes into the subject of Chinese mercenaries in more depth.
Inside Missfresh’s hunt for investor cash ahead of collapse | Financial Times – probably one of the best comments on this article – Missfresh is only one of a number of Chinese domestic startups that sought US investors, as their own domestic private investors were unwilling to invest. For a Chinese investor, they always consider when and if the CCP may want a piece of the business, or worse take action against the promoters and management. for non performance. The lighter loss being financial and. the greater loss, life.
China’s Growth Sacrifice by Stephen S. Roach – Project Syndicate – Japanization of an increasingly debt-intensive, bubble-supported Chinese economy. An overly leveraged Chinese property sector fits this script, as does the debt-fueled expansion of state-owned enterprises since the 2008-09 global financial crisis. For China, this became the case for deleveraging, well worth the short-term price to avoid the longer-term stagnation of Japan-like lost decades. Finally, a major reversal in the ideological underpinnings of governance is also at play. As the revolutionary founder of a new Chinese state, Mao emphasized ideology over development. For Deng and his successors, it was the opposite: De-emphasis of ideology was viewed as necessary to boost economic growth through market-based “reform and opening up.” Then came Xi. Initially, there was hope that his so-called “Third Plenum Reforms” of 2013 would usher in a new era of strong economic performance. But the new ideological campaigns carried out under the general rubric of Xi Jinping Thought, including a regulatory clampdown on once-dynamic Internet platform companies and associated restrictions on online gaming, music, and private tutoring, as well as a zero-COVID policy that has led to never-ending lockdowns, have all but dashed those hopes – China was on a rocket ship that it couldn’t control, it is now trying wrestle back control at the expense of growth
Eurostar to axe direct trains from London to Disneyland Paris over Brexit | Eurostar | The Guardian – “We have taken the decision not to run the direct Disney service … in summer 2023,” it said. “While we continue to recover financially from the pandemic and monitor developments in the proposed EU entry-exit system, we need to focus on our core routes to ensure we can continue to provide the high level of service and experience that our customers rightly expect.” – not enough demand from the UK and too much hassle to run
In Myanmar, Vietnamese firms learn the political risks of backing the junta — Radio Free Asia – interesting that Burmese consumers are boycotting military-owned businesses including MyTel – a mobile carrier that VietTel has a major stake in. Also: Vietnamese firms have begun investing abroad, and, in particular, have sought a place in the 5G marketplace, especially in markets where there is residual fear of China’s communications giant Huawei. – Also: Vietnamese conglomerate THADICO, which has invested in Myanmar Plaza, the largest modern mall and office space in Yangon, ran afoul of the local population when the plaza’s security attacked civil disobedience protesters in November 2021. This led to a sustained boycott that hit the plaza’s 200 retail units hard, compelling the firm to publicly apologize
