Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).
Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.
Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.
A post on AI sovereignty came out of one of those times when a casual conversation suddenly has you seeing the theme in your news feeds. I was having one of them conversations with a friend over a paper cup of coffee, mentioned I’d been embedded at Google and they said ‘we can’t trust the Americans with AI, the way we did with social’.
That opens opportunities. Chinese open source models are working in Singapore government data centres, Korean cloud computing company Naver is looking beyond its own country for clients who want an alternative to US big technology. France has gone it alone with its own defence AI – as the ultimate expression of AI sovereignty.
The All-Star Chinese AI Conversation of 2026 | ChinaTalk – Interesting discussions on China based AI platforms on their successes and challenges. By their nature, the give China defacto AI sovereignty. Risk taking and GPUs or TPUs performance seem to be the main sources of concern. A good deal of focus on squeezing out the maximum intelligence per watt rather than scaling to infinity and beyond. Tonality wise it’s refreshing down to earth in comparison to Altman et al.
‘South Korea’s Google’ pitches AI alternative to US and China | FT – Korea has built up positive relations in the Middle East since the 1970s when they helped on major construction and engineering projects. They would be viewed positively and as a good hedge to both the US and China from a technology dependency point-of-view. Their offer is greater AI sovereignty for Middle Eastern countries in particular, you might also winning business in Central Asia as well.
It comes as a growing number of brands are moving into the children’s, teenage and young adult skincare market. In October, the first skincare brand developed for under-14s, Ever-eden, launched in the US. Superdrug has just created a range for those aged between 13 and 28.
A number of brands have surged in popularity among very young social-media users, creating a phenomenon known as “Sephora kids”. These children share videos showcasing beauty products from Drunk Elephant, Bubble, Sol de Janeiro and similar brands.
A Theory of Dumb: Why Are IQ Scores Suddenly Falling? | Intelligencer – a century ago, if you asked someone what dogs and rabbits have in common, they might answer “Dogs hunt rabbits,” not “They’re both mammals.”Maybe, then, all the noise and novelty wasn’t rotting our minds but upgrading them. (Studies suggest that better nutrition and reduced exposure to lead may have also helped.) In any case, the Flynn effect held steady for so long and through so many apparent threats that there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t last forever, even if, someday, somebody invented a chatbot that could do homework or Theo Von started podcasting.
Or so thought Elizabeth Dworak, now an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s medical school, when she chose the topic of her 2023 master’s thesis. She decided to analyze the results of 394,378 IQ tests taken in the U.S. between 2006 and 2018 to see if they exhibited the same climb. “I had all this cognitive data and thought, Hey, there’s probably a Flynn effect in there,” she says. But when she ran the numbers, “I felt like I was in Don’t Look Up,” the movie in which an astronomy grad student played by Jennifer Lawrence discovers a comet speeding toward Earth. “I spent weeks going back through all the code. I thought I’d messed something up and would have to delay submitting. But then I showed my adviser, and he said, ‘Nope, your math is right.’” The math showed declines in three important testing categories, including matrix reasoning (abstract visual puzzles), letter and number series (pattern recognition), and verbal reasoning (language-based problem-solving). The first two, in which losses were deepest, measure what psychologists call fluid intelligence, or the power to adapt to new situations and think on the fly. The drops showed up across age, gender, and education level but were most dramatic among 18-to-22-year-olds and those with the least amount of schooling.
How Hustle Culture Got America Addicted to Work – Business Insider – in America, the long, steady march toward a more leisurely future came to an abrupt halt. Today, according to the international economic database Penn World Table, the German work year is an astonishing 380 hours shorter than ours — which means that Germans work almost 10 weeks less than we do every year.
Even stranger, Americans began to glamorize their lack of free time. As the boomer generation reshaped society in its own image, it brought its ’60s, countercultural ethos to the workplace — transforming the staid, conformist office into a vessel of self-expression. Work became the central means by which you undertook to live your best life, follow your passion, and change the world. As Goldman bankers and Google idealists alike began to toil through the nights and weekends that previous generations had fought so hard to secure for them, mental-health professionals bemoaned the rise of what became known as “hustle culture.” Working long hours was suddenly the ultimate status symbol, a peculiarly American form of humblebrag. In 2017, a clever marketing study found that if you told an American you worked long hours, they assumed you were rich. If you told an Italian the same thing, they assumed you were poor.
Waymo Has Come for the Kids in Los Angeles – The New York Times – “Here, it is not unusual for families to have multiple children attending different schools far from home. School buses, if you are deemed eligible, are limited to dropping off and picking up children at locations and times that are often unhelpful. The city bus, if there is somehow a direct route to school, comes with its own set of risks that can make parents uneasy.
Ms. Rivera, a psychiatric social worker, is stuck at work until 6 p.m. most days, while her husband, who installs and repairs glass, comes home even later.
The couple struggles to coordinate their jobs and their three children. They tried Uber, and Lyft, but found that those drivers tended to cancel after discovering their riders were minors. They turned to HopSkipDrive, a service geared toward students, but the drivers had to be scheduled in advance, and would leave if children were late.
Then, a few months ago, Ms. Rivera and Alexis did a test run with Waymo.
“It was the only option where I was like, ‘Oh my God, she can order a car, nobody’s in there, she can unlock it with her phone,’” Ms. Rivera, 42, said. “I know she’s going to be safe and she’s going to get home.” – interesting use case
Chinese luxury goes local | WARC – High-end Chinese brands are stealing a march on their Western rivals with homegrown labels that appeal to more discerning local consumers who are looking for luxury items that feel tailored to them. China’s $49bn luxury market is “changing fast”: ecommerce sales at jeweller Lapou Gold, for instance, have surged more than 1000% in the first three quarters of this year compared with two years ago. Songmont, a Chinese brand that claims to have ‘experiential’ designer bags, has grown its online sales 90% while Gucci online bag sales in China have fallen 50%, according to the Business Times. – This was inevitable when you had so many talented (and a number of mediocre) Chinese people being brought through the likes of Central St Martins.
Coca-Cola CMO Manolo Arroyo on WPP, AI and a new era for media | The Drum – Coca-Cola’s marketing ecosystem was sprawling and complex. The business was working with approximately 6,000 agency partners globally, while the majority of its multi-billion-dollar media budget was allocated to traditional channels. Arroyo wanted fewer partners, deeper integration and a shift towards digital-first execution at scale.
That ambition led to the consolidation of Coca-Cola’s global advertising account into WPP and the creation of Open X, a bespoke unit designed to manage the brand across markets and disciplines. Nine studios were established in key regions, housing a mix of Coca-Cola employees, WPP staff and specialist partners.
“It’s a marketing factory,” says Arroyo. “There are more than 2,000 employees of Coca-Cola and more than 2,000 employees of WPP […] and ultimately it’s enabled us to move from a company that in 2019 was investing close to 75% of our paid media on traditional TV, to a company that’s going to end up this year putting 70% of all our paid media on digital, particularly social and influencer led, marketing. For us, it’s our new TV.”
Outcry after French army chief’s ‘prepared to lose children’ warning | Le Monde – “We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to deter the Moscow regime from trying its luck by going further,” said Mandon. “What we lack, and this is where you have a major role to play, is the strength of spirit to accept suffering in order to protect who we are.”
Paying tribute to French forces deployed worldwide, he added: “If our country falters because it is not prepared to accept – let’s be honest – to lose its children, to suffer economically because defense production will take precedence, then we are at risk.” – I don’t think that the west is ready or able to face Russia or China because of this. The war is lost before its fought
SOF, AI, and Changing Western Conceptions of War | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University – Each generational shift in technology impacts military operations. Consequently, a shift in military training, command, and promotion structure should follow. Much of the conversation surrounding AI makes it seem like an unprecedented esoteric concept. While this is partly true, the same was said about steam engines during the Industrial Revolution. Simply put, AI is the next technological breakthrough and there will be more after it. As Clausewitz stated, the character of war changes, not the nature of war. A willingness to adapt while following strategic tenets will enable us to weather the storm and thrive in AI generation warfare. Failure to do so will only bring obsolescence while America’s adversaries gain global hegemonic status. Proper implementation of AI will result in faster decision making, more accurate intelligence, improved resource allocation, better spatial awareness, more effective messaging, and more impactful strategies. The key to reaching this level of success is SOF. SOF is uniquely equipped and trained to implement AI quickly and effectively, delivering results that can be scaled to the rest of the military.
A New Anonymous Phone Carrier Lets You Sign Up With Nothing but a Zip Code | WIRED – Phreeli, the phone carrier startup is designed to be the most privacy-focused cellular provider available to Americans. Phreeli, as in, “speak freely,” aims to give its user a different sort of privacy from the kind that can be had with end-to-end encrypted texting and calling tools like Signal or WhatsApp. Those apps hide the content of conversations, or even, in Signal’s case, metadata like the identities of who is talking to whom. Phreeli instead wants to offer actual anonymity. It can’t help government agencies or data brokers obtain users’ identifying information because it has almost none to share. The only piece of information the company records about its users when they sign up for a Phreeli phone number is, in fact, a mere ZIP code. That’s the minimum personal data Merrill has determined his company is legally required to keep about its customers for tax purposes.
Waking the Sleeping European Giant – by Matthew C. Klein | The Overshoot – “Europe” as a geopolitical entity does not exist. Instead of a strong and independent continent capable of securing the lives and freedoms of its citizens, Europe is divided into dozens of countries, all of which are too small individually to stand up to external threats. The problem is compounded by the mismatch between where the military resources can be found and where they are most needed. There is relatively little overlap between the places with the balance sheet capacity (mostly in the north), the places with the productive capacity (mostly in the center), the places with the largest populations of otherwise unoccupied fighting-age men (more in the south), and Europe’s front lines (largely, although not exclusively, in the east).
Bending Spoons raids the digital graveyard for paranormal returns | FT – businesses in the Bending Spoons stable: AOL, the dial-up internet service that had been most recently attached to Yahoo, and Evernote, the virtual scratch pad. – alongside Vimeo and Brightcove with Eventbrite due to join them
2025 started warmer, but windier than normal. I had just published a similar post and had a days break before thinking about drafting 2025 as it happened, how it was seen at the time tends to be missed out when we look back with the benefit of hindsight.
I haven’t written much about the Trump administration, mainly because everything kept changing, so it wasn’t apparent at the time what was really important. Every day felt like a burning platform.
January 2025
Small and medium sized business confidence at new low. Japanese convenience store operator Lawson used offshore workers to help customers via digital avatar. Chinese property developer VANKE CEO was detained to help authorities with their enquiries. VANKE, alongside Country Garden, is one of the better ran companies known for corporate transparency. Meanwhile Guangzhou FC (formerly Guangzhou Evergrande) was ejected from China’s professional football league. Amazon announced UK drone delivery service.
HSBC shut down their first attempt at competing in the ‘fintech’ space. Zing competed with Wise and Revolut in global money transfers.
Circana research found that GLP-1s weren’t responsible for long term sales declines in snacks and other consumer packaged goods sales.
Rolex raised their prices across their models by 1-to-3 percent. Louis Vuittonrevisited its 2003 collaboration with Takashi Murakami. LVMH Watch Week leaned hard into novelties and featured Bvlgari, Daniel Roth, Gérald Genta, Hublot, L’Epée 1839, Louis Vuitton, TAG Heuer, Tiffany & Co. and Zenith.
Porsche sales dropped, mostly due to 28% drop in China during 2024. Louis Vuitton launched an early 2000s streetwear throwback for its autumn / winter 2025 collection by Nigo and Pharrell Williams.
While generation cohorts are no better than horoscopes, they have prominence in marketing discourse; Gen Beta started. Publicis Worldwide & Leo Burnett merged to form Leo. Kellogg’s returned to British TV screens with mascot Cornelius the Cockrel in the ad ‘See you in the morning’.
51% say that overall, they like the ad, while only 26% disliked it. That’s a good score, you’d expect an average campaign to roughly take 40% like to 20% dislike.
UK institution, the BBC shipping forecast turned 100. Half of banned UK crypto ads remained online.
The earliest iterations of cartoon characters Popeye and Tintin went into the public domain in the U.S – but his likeness and name is still trademarked. STEM content creator Zara Dar made 3x more revenue per video on Pornhub vs. YouTube.
State laws based on Louisiana’s Act 440 require age verification for adult entertainment sites. In response, Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, had blocked access in 20 states. This included Florida, a major centre for porn production. Meta launched machine learning powered accounts, it wasn’t well received. Meta pivoted from fact checking to be more combative with the EU, Brazil and China.
Some US TikTok users signed up to Chinese Instagram analogue Xiaohongshu in protest to TikTok restrictions.
Why did the US take action against TikTok? Rutgers University affiliated research from 2023 was the best public reason given. TikTok returned in one news cycle thanks to President Trump’s patronage.
Donald J. Trump became U.S. president again as typhoon-speed winds drove fires in Los Angeles.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned. Edelman’s trust barometer survey marked new societal nadir with a crisis of grievance.
Oliviero Toscani, the photographer behind Bennetton’s iconic advertising campaigns and work in the fashion label’s COLORS magazine died.
Film director David Lynch died.
Over the past decade ‘children’s cafeterias‘ which offer free or low-cost meals have grown in Japan from a standing start to over 10,000 venues. (Similar to the UK’s food bank expansion.) 2025 saw 1,794 cafeterias open.
The majority of cafeterias have no age restrictions. Out of an estimated total 18.9 million annual users, 70%, or 13 million, were children while the other 30% (5.9 million) were adults.
Across Asia and in diaspora communities around the world, the lunar new year was welcomed in on January 29th. In the Chinese horoscope, it was the year of the wood snake.
Cellular mobile services in UK turn 40. UK government announced improved atomic clock that will help in more precise, jam-proof navigation. CES was all about generative AI. OpenAI continued to lose money on ChatGPT. Irrational exuberance in LLMs deflated by popularity of DeepSeek.
How January 2025 memed
Streetwear’s pivot to avant garde all-black influenced by Rick Owens and Raf Simons with dark eye shadow, was popularised by hip-hop and trap artists out of Atlanta. Playboi Carti was associated with the look. The look got a name inspired by Carti’s Opium record label – opiumcore. Jing Daily claimed that gender fluidity and opiumcore looks were going to trend in China luxury and streetwear.
It’s at odds with Chinese government guidance. They deplatformed ‘excessively feminine’ male models and those who ‘slavishly worship’ western culture. Even opiumcore’s name is problematic.
February 2025
Donald Trump tariffs announced against Canada, China and Mexico. Samsung head Lee Jae-yong cleared of fraud and stock manipulation charges. Clothing store Forever21 went bankrupt again. Bybit had $1.5Bn of etherium stolen from its ‘offline’ cold wallet – biggest crypto theft to date. Nike collaborates with Skims. Unilever changes their CEO.
Robert F Kennedy Jr promised to ‘Make America Healthy Again” or MAHA, crystalised the name of a movement that brought together wellness and the political right.
Language learning company Duolingo, shared their new brand book, which was held up as an example of how to capture a brand’s culture, positioning and market proposition. Liverpool Football Club refreshed their brand identity. R3 published their 2024 new business league table. Key takeaways:
Interpublic lost 500,000 USD in business more than they won, what they won in creative, they lost in media.
Fuji TV screens tentpole anime show Sazae-sanwithout sponsorships, an advertising boycott over a sexual assault allegation cover-up. Lidl sold out its TikTok shop debut in 20 minutes. Post-production and video FX business Technicolor shut down.
Simon Kemp launched this year’s Digital 2025 compendium of global online behaviours. YouTube turned 20 on Valentine’s Day. Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic turned five.
David Webb announced plans for the end of his iconic financial website which covered the Hong Kong market. Webb was in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Fiverr launched FiverrGo – a generative AI art-working service.
Taiwanese TV actress Barbie Hsu (pronounced Shu) died aged 48. Hsu was a popular actress across East and South East Asia. The Democratic Party in Hong Kong disbanded.
HKTaxi – which pioneered taxi-hailing apps in Hong Kong, announced April closure. The Washington Post alleged UK government demanded global backdoor on Apple services. Apple removed protected cloud encryption from UK users. Humane AI has its intellectual property bought by HPE. Humane is shuttered including its AI pin device. Apple launched its iPhone 16e, it featured Apple’s first custom wireless modem. Amazon announced closure of messaging and video app Chime. Promised to continue supporting the Chime SDK, which allows the underlying messaging and video service to be integrated directly into apps. Microsoft announced Skype service closure.
How February 2025 memed?
Credit due to Dan Lambden: *LinkedInsincerity (noun)*: A phenomenon observed on LinkedIn characterised by interactions that appear inauthentic, exaggerated, or lacking genuine sincerity.
These interactions may include overly enthusiastic endorsements, insincere congratulatory messages, and inflated descriptions of professional achievements, often driven by the desire to network or gain visibility rather than foster true professional connections. In essence, LinkedInsincerity represents the façade of professionalism masked by the pursuit of personal gain.
March 2025
March started with cold sunny days and the first snowdrops in the park by my house.
But in comparison to the weather, economic indicators weren’t great. Hong Kong slowed down its retail sales decline. HSBC celebrated the 160th anniversary of its founding.
Launched in 1953, JCB built their 1,000,000th backhoe loader. Volkswagen announced move away from touchscreen-only car controls. AstraZeneca bought cell therapy company esoBiotec. 23andMe declared bankrupt.
Going upmarket, Moët & Chandon & Pharrell Williams collaborated on a €30,000 limited edition champagne bottle. It was to demonstrate ‘ collective spirit, optimism and human connection’. Lewis Hamilton became a Lulu Lemon ambassador. Willy Chavarria collaborated with Tinder on a small collection with the theme ‘How we love is who we are’. Rolex opened London flagship managed by Watches of Switzerland. Maker’s Mark launched Fielden Rye whisky – their first new recipe in 70 years.
Starbucks launched a collaboration with Snoopy to reboot sales.
In media, Sesame Street started shooting its 56th season. But had no distribution partner in place. Yahoo! sold TechCrunch to private equity buyer. The Federal Trade Commission looked into Omnicom’s takeover of Interpublic. Apple loses $1 billion / year on streaming. Medical drama Grey’s Anatomy turns 20 years old. The Grateful Dead celebrated their 60th anniversary with a 60 CD boxset Enjoying The Ride featured live sets recorded from 1969 to 1994.
In online, old was gold as Yahoo! turned 30 and has enjoyed a mild comeback. (Disclosure, I worked there earlier on in my career.) Digg relaunch announced. Discord planned for IPO.
Manus, a Chinese ‘general AI agent’ launched beta release that outperformedOpenAI. Deliveroo announced plan to exit Hong Kong operations in April.
Mobile World Congress saw Xiaomi & Realme show concept smartphones with detachable lens. Apple delayed more personalised aspects of Siri in its Apple Intelligence rollout. Alphabet bought security start-up Wiz for $32Bn. Microsoft turned 50 years old. Oracle systems were breached and health records stolen.
In other news, Japan marked 30 years since the Tokyo subway sarin attacks. Author and former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky died. Irish crime fiction author Ken Bruen died.
How March 2025 memed?
Geopolitical disruption: The Daily Star is a UK tabloid newspaper with a right of centre, populist editorial voice. It would be a natural ally of the Trump administration; yet the headline on front page of the paper was ‘JD Dunce‘ on the March 5th, edition.
Research firm YouGov showed a sharp decline in how UK people saw the US.
April 2025
The end of March 2025 was the height of sakura season in Japan and in the UK. The sun greeted the start of April, so did the Trump administration with global tariffs in ‘Liberation Day‘ announcement.
Another thing went up in the US as well as tariffs, preventable disease-related deaths. Pertussis (whooping cough) and measles increased in US compared to last year. Pertussis infections doubled, measles infections grew even more. Spain and Portugal suffered countrywide electricity blackouts.
The US National Science Foundation got rid of most external advisory panels and the FDA announced move to phase out animal testing.
On a lighter note another thing going viral was pistachio cream filled chocolate.
At Watches & Wonders, Rolex launched the Land Dweller, a watch design that is similar in concept to the Oysterquartz, Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Vacheron Constantine Overseas. Just as important was the new high-beat movement design rolled out in the Land Dweller. Prada bought Versace. LVMH fashion and leather goods sales fell 5% year-on-year. Added to luxury sector woes were Chinese factories claiming to offer consumers better deals on luxury goods by going direct. One bright note – Highsnobriety found that 40% of American respondents found that sustainable fashion was fashionable. This compared to just 25% of young people (gen-z) globally.
Advertising Week Europe was held in London. Key topics of discussion included retail media and connected TV from Uber, Carwow and Disney. Adobe provided generative AI designed conference bags. UK marketing spend fell for first time in four years. Hostess Brands became first mainstream brand to promote their products on April 20th – informally 4.20 day that celebrated cannabis use. McVities celebrated the 100th anniversary of the chocolate digestive and Wired magazine celebrated the 30th anniversary of its original website.
Bluesky announced its plans to verify accounts. Nike sued over the closure of its NFT business.
In other news, it was 50 years since the end of the Vietnam war. Reggae star Max Romeo died in Jamaica, Pope Francis died in Rome and it was the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s ending to the novel was widely quoted and captured the zeitgeist of April 2025 well.
“They were careless people . . . they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
I had started a project engagement at Google. This was 20 years to the day when I started my in-house gig at Yahoo! less “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” more “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.
The Apple iPad turned 15 and AirTags turned 4 years old.
How April 2025 memed?
An article in WARCcaptured April’s mood for me with the acronym VUCA. The phrase has its origin in the US Army War College during the mid-1980s, who were looking to describe a post-cold war scenario.
Volatility: Rapid significant change with little to no warning as to the size of change.
Uncertainty: Unclear outcomes as are the causes.
Complexity: Multiple factors in play with complex inter-related aspects to them which makes finding a way forward challenging.
Ambiguity: the information that is available is open to misinterpretation.
May 2025
May started with the warmest day of the year, 26 celsius in London.
Warren Buffett announced plan to retire from Berkshire Hathaway. The UK and US outline shape of a limited trade agreement. The CIA launched a high production value ad campaign on western social media to recruit Chinese agents.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer celebrated 20 years of his Mad Money show. While 2024 was was the year of semaglutide, Novo Nordisk seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It was still a surprise when Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen stepped down as CEO. Unilever discovered a correlation between a particular type of skin microbiome bacteria and positive mental health measures. Consumer DNA testing company 23andMe was sold to Regeneron.
Alex Mashinsky sentenced to 12 years for fraud related to 2023 collapse of cryptocurrency business Celsius.
Monocle announced a new book shop and café in Paris. Business Insider laid off over 20% of staff and announced shift to AI. Amazon announced Prime Day to be held in July and did its first brand refresh in two decades. Google refreshed the big G icon. Mozilla announced closure of bookmarking service Pocket. Wikipedia took five years to go from six million articles to seven million around May 28, 2025. DoorDash agreed to buy Deliveroo. Hong Kong congee restaurant chain Ocean Empire closed down abruptly. Nutella announced a new peanut-based variant.
Dior Coutureadmitted a successful cyber attack. US telecoms company Charter announced it was buying Cox Communications.
McDonald’s Restaurants saw a decline in sales. This was down to low income consumers spending less, while middle class earners still weren’t going into McDonalds. Normally when there is a recession, McDonalds should benefit from the more well-off trading down to McDonalds. Instead, fortunes have diverged into a ‘k-shaped’ recession. Lower income earners are hit, while middle classes aren’t. What Axios called the ‘McRecession‘.
How May 2025 memed?
The conclave to select a new Pope shined a light on all things Vatican related. President Trump got in on the act via his social media feed. Robert Provost was elected pope in a relatively fast conclave. His election surprised prediction markets. Recent film Conclave became a must-watch film as it was a good guide to the process of electing a new Pope.
June 2025
June started with changeable spring-like weather with rain from London to Tokyo. The UK government published its Strategic Defence Review. A Ukrainian operation destroyed Russian aircraft deep inside Russia using small drones concealed in containers. Israel launched attacks on Iran.
CEO Mark Read announced he was leaving WPP at end of 2025. Apple’s ‘Shot on an iPhone’ campaign won at Cannes. Apple launched a new ‘shot on an iPhone’ film featuring Stormzy.
US Vogue editor Anna Wintour moved to more hands-off role as chief content officer at Condé Nast.
Unilever bought ‘chemical-free’ direct-to-consumer men’s personal care brand Dr Squatch for $1.5Bn. UK discounter Poundland was sold for a pound.
Hong Kong legalised basketball betting by Hong Kong Jockey Club. This will attract mainland gamblers where basketball has a huge following in comparison to soccer or horse racing. Asian currency arbitrage opportunity indicated a problem in US finances.
Bill Atkinson who was part of the original Mac and General Magic teams died, as did soundtrack composer Lalo Schifrin.
Meanwhile Apple’s WWDC felt like Mac-orientated conferences of years long past. AI was sprinkled in features with a focus on on-device AI models. Oakley and Meta collaborated on smart glasses. Flickr roles out creative commons 4, giving creators greater control over their image rights.
Chart of the month June 2025
Podcast advertising showed signs of maturing with slowing growth according to WARC.
How June 2025 memed? – TACO
From US foreign policy to trade negotiations the TACO trade dominated. TACO was shorthand for ‘Trump always chickens out’ – markets bet against the Trump administration’s commitment to a course of action – which starts to become a dangerous bet to make when this viewpoint becomes sufficiently visible. OperationMidnight Hammer being the exception that proved the rule.
July 2025
July started off with a heatwave. The Big, Beautiful bill passed in the US senate and congress. In the UK, on of the biggest things that happened in 2025 was that 16 and 17 year olds got the right to vote. The Communist Party of China turned 104, the United States celebrated its 250th anniversary of its founding. It was the 40th anniversary of Live Aid – so Live Aid was the equivalent distance in time from us to what the end of the second world war was to Live Aid.
Perplexity AI touted a nascent advertising offering around media agencies. Chinese multi-modal AI model Kimi launched. One of the more interesting aspects was the ability to upload up to 50 documents for reference. But it didn’t deliver as well as promised, I will let the Web Curios newsletter tell you the rest:
…when I played with it earlier this week it quickly became apparent that this is a mendacious little fcuk and will spit out completely-invented material with a glee unmatched by any of the actual, paid-for, top-end models; as such I can only recommend it as a fun thing to poke around with rather than a free alternative to the big players.
Apple supported the cinema launch of its film F1, with a haptic trailer, which used the vibrating motor on the smartphone alongside the speakers. The film did well at the cinema, so Apple bid for formula 1 streaming rights in the US.
K-pop band BTS announced return with news music and global tour. The Observer laid bare lies and deceit behind bestseller The Salt Path. Media executive Linda Yaccarino resigned from Twitter (X).
In the same way that in the mid-1990s onwards to 2000, the internet became part of culture as much as a technology people used, AI has been having a similar movement since 2023 onwards. When you combine AI with highly memetic training content and accidents ensue, so it was with Grok AI becoming ‘Mechahitler‘ and edgelords around the world rejoiced in their childhood bedroom or parent’s basement. Grok is considered to be an AI without a ‘woke ideology’.
Grok didn’t magic the name ‘Mechahitler’ out of thin air, it is a character from the Wolfenstein series of games based on various alternative history scenarios of world war two. It’s emulated by cosplayers and a film had been in development for over a decade.
Mechahitler as a meme beat out BURRITO – Bold Unilateral Retaliation Regardless of Inflation Trade or Order, which came from the TBOY podcast.
August 2025
July bowed out wetter and cooler than much of the month and August opened with winds that made it feel more like spring. It was the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 250th anniversary of Daniel O’Connell. Indonesians protested their government by flying the pirate flag from manga and anime franchise One Piece.
Vogue saw an online backlash against its first AI model photo shoot. A French livestreamer died live on broadcast – in a manner eerily reminiscent of the David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.
Adidaslaunched a collaborative sneaker with Lufthansa. The Ford Transit celebrated its 60th birthday. Nike leans into its ACG technical outdoor brand to drive growth. Seiko celebrated 60 years of making dive watches in a low-key manner with enthusiasts. McDonald’s in Thailand allegedly demanded damages and fired a restaurant manager for having previously been a go-go dancer – who was pictured on her former bar’s social media. It wasn’t clear if it was a franchisee or the Thai McDonald’s partner McThai Co. Ltd who was involved.
Intel CEO was asked to resign by The White House because of his ‘connections‘ to China. Later on the US government takes a stake in Intel. The Pakistani energy sector suffered from renewed cyber attacks.
https://flic.kr/p/2rmo6o8
NASA Jim Lovell who was famous for being part of Project Apollo died.
How August 2025 memed?
In the same way that Che Guevara was a touchstone for rebellion against established authority in the 20th century – the internet has found its own icon. Ibrahim Traore is a coup leader and Burkinese army officer. Traore has become famous beyond the Francophone region, becoming an icon for protestors from Micronesia to the New Zealand Parliament.
September 2025
Autumn weather started in the last week of August, with the rain arriving too late to help out arable farmers in the home counties.
China, Russia and India met as part of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation).
China and Russia sign an initial agreement to develop a new high capacity gas line called Spirit of Siberia 2. Oracle’s Larry Ellison becomes the world’s richest man.
ITV celebrated its 70th birthday. Long time online blogging service Typepad closed down. Online news aggregator Techmeme turned 20. Google Docs turns 20 and Google Chrome browser market share exceeds 70 percent. AOL discontinued dial-up internet services in the US and Canada and was put up for sale for $1.5 billion. That’s still less than $1.50 for every disk and CD that AOL ever sent out to consumers in the US and Europe. The UK security services launched the Silent Courier portal to aid leaks by Russian and Chinese sources. Mastodon launched new services for corporates and marketers. Specialist interest online video networks Playeur and History of Weapons and War (think History Channel meets YouTube documentaries) both closed down, subscription based video platforms are hard.
Apple continued to lose key engineers to Meta and launch iPhones. Training LLMs sloppily in one aspect of their roles can make their behaviour malicious in other areas. Chinese company makes world’s fastest production car.
Concerns about an AI bubble started to show up in rate of change in search volume.
In the face of smartphone bans, American school children dug out iPods, Discmans and Walkmans to still have music while they study or just hang out in class. The UK government tested its emergency alerts system prompting a siren sound and this screen shots on smartphones across the country. There was no corresponding SMS text message to feature phones.
Ron Carroll, a Chicago-based singer, producer songwriter died leaving a body of house music behind. Italian film actress Claudia Cardinale died, she was famous for Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Leone’s Once Upon a Time In The West. Giorgio Armani died a week after his last interview with the FT was published. Robert Redford died aged 89, a day after the FT wrote a style article about the tweed blazer he wore in Three Days of The Condor. It didn’t take long for some wags to talk about the ‘curse of the FT’. Yahoo! News covered off Redford’s ‘role‘ in the nod of approval GIF, which made me a bit sad, given for many people that clip of Jeremiah Johnson was all they’d seen of his career as an actor / director.
How September 2025 memed?
Operation ‘Raise The Colours’ saw St George’s flags spring up across England from homes and lamp posts to painted roundabouts. Whilst many of the displays were well meaning, the initative was apparently driven by far right groups. This seemed to be designed to build momentum for a Tommy Robinson rally in London.
October 2025
There was a downpour overnight as September rolled into October. The Labour Party conference had finished, leader Kier Starmer had historically low approval ratings. Storm Amy hit the UK that weekend. Britain lost control of its borders. Data analysed by David Webb showed that Hong Kong had a revenue problem from tax avoidance / evasion of tobacco products. The cause was less clear, it may be cross-border shopping trips, smuggling gangs or more likely both. Webb’s website was shut down on Hallowe’en.
Barclays bought US consumer loans business Fresh Egg.
The FT claimed that the UK government demanded a backdoor to British user data. The Labour Party conference had finished. Ireland elected a new president in a process marred by a large amount of spoiled votes and low turnout. Scandal dogged Labour decision to abandon China spy case – or as former British ambassador with Chinese experience put it ‘appeasement’ and a ‘masterclass in ineptitude’. Chinese conglomerate BYD sells record number of electric cars in UK as Jaguar Land Rover flounders from cyberattack by suspected ‘state actor‘. Mercedes Vision Iconic concept car unveiled in Shanghai, looked like the vehicle the relaunched Jaguar brand would want to build. The grill design mimicked a vintage Mercedes 600 ‘Grosser’ and was a world away from the current nadir of the car brand.
Apple released upgrades of three products with its M5 processor. LVMH offered hope of business growth. Adidas unveiled its football for the next world cup called Trionda which looked like a shanzhai Poké Ball (used for catching and storing Pokemon). Toyota won its ninth manufacturers championship competing in the FIA WRC (world rally championship). 2025 marked their fourth back-to-back championship win.
Indonesia blocked TikTok and then unblocked it when the platform provided user information. Analytics suggested the world usage of social media may have peaked. Amazon hit 200 million US shoppers using Prime. Alphabet celebrated the 25th anniversary of Google Ads.
OpenAI had teething troubles while developing a new consumer hardware product, and seemingly does deals with everyone for $1 trillion+ of infrastructure – by mid-October it’s easier to list who they hadn’t done a deal with. By the end of October, OpenAI announced for-profit business. Concerns about an AI economic bubble became mainstream. EU looked to promote AI digital sovereignty. Amazon Web Services had an outage, Gigabrain announced the shutdown of their Reddit search tool and pivot to Aire AI video. NHS announced major productivity benefits from Microsoft Copilot trial.
Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar criticised Jensen Huang and Nvidia (at the head of a vanguard of large American multinationals) on their continued investment in China. The title was subsequently changed on the digital edition of the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to a more generic ‘Why the China Doves Are Wrong.’
Actress and director Diane Keaton died leaving behind a diverse body of film and TV work. I thought her role in The Little Drummer Girl is her most underrated performance.
How October 2025 memed?
My favourite one of the five ‘core’ trends Jing Daily on Chinese social media ‘fits’ was goblincore.
The name tells you everything that you need to know. The looks seems to be inspired by video games and cosplay that borrows heavily from Tolkien, who in turn borrowed from European folklore.
Escapism with a hint of darkness made a good deal of sense in a time of high youth unemployment, economic uncertainty and technological upheaval in China.
November 2025
The end of October was wet and blustery. The Economist came out and said that western government debt was at levels unseen since Napoleonic times. Donald Trump threatened to sue BBC. Vaping overtook smoking in the UK. Starbucks sold the majority of its China operations to a local private equity investor. Sony launched a cheaper Japan-only Playstation 5. Funko announced that it would struggle to continue as a going concern due to its high debt level. Celebrations for the 85th anniversary of Bruce Lee got underway.
Palantir had great sales results, but spooked investors. Microsoft admitted that its efforts to build out computing power for LLMs was limited by access to data centre electrical power.
Some of the major studios in the porn industry including Aylo who runs Pornhub came together to establish a code of conduct. Why now? China’s equivalent to Grindr have been withdrawn from local app stores.
Shein keelhauled by the French government due to it selling ‘child like’ sex dolls online. Israel gets rid of Chinese cars in its vehicle fleet as it can’t the vehicles against espionage. An executive at L3Harris was jailed for selling secrets to the Russians. BYD announced UK launch date for Porsche 911 rival.
RTÉannounced a new daytime line-up for its week day daytime programming on RTÉ Radio 1 to take it through the end of 2025 onwards. Christmas advertising arrived even earlier than last year. WARC claim that advertisers were following consumers who were starting Christmas shopping research earlier. John Lewis’ effort seemed to be a ‘homage’ to the imagery of Charlotte Wells’ film Aftersun. Nick Asbury wrote the best (all be it over the top) analysis of the advert.
Early research on generative AI produced ad creative had lessons on the best approaches to get effective creative. IPG UK revenue dropped 8.4% quarter-on-quarter in advance of its purchase by Omnicom. Omnicom completed purchase of IPG, a critic described the deal as ‘two drunks leaning on a lamp post‘.
Nigo’s streetwear brand Human Madelisted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Private equity company Vista claimed job cuts were due to AI automating tasks. One in five UK companies expected to follow Vista’s example in 2026. Law firm Clifford Chance let go of 10% of back office staff due to automation and offshoring.
Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po caught fire with the flames spreading from tower-to-tower. The whole of Hong Kong went into mourning. At least 146 people lost their lives. The Chinese government was concerned that the tragedy might spark protests.
How November 2025 memed?
6-7 featured ambiguously on a rap track and was then picked up by teens to mean everything and nothing.
December 2025
The US government published their 2025 National Security Strategy on The Whitehouse website. December started off with rain and Omnicom-IPG related firings playing out in near real-time on Reddit. The share price was up 0.14% by the close of the market in New York. More job cuts were expected as Omnicom hadn’t reorganised its own portfolio of agencies. A presentation that captured the zeitgeist of social media marketing for 2025 was published.
Jimmy Lai, who founded Giordano and The Apple Daily was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign powers and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious materials. The UK government response was weak, the US one slightly stronger.
UK consumer spending dropped at fastest rate in four years. UK arms of discount supermarket brands Aldi and Lidl sold Christmas vegetables including brussels sprouts, turnips, carrots, parsnips and potatoes for 8 pence / bag, (or 84 – 94% discount).
WARC has research to show that global advertising spend is growing faster than the economy – but that incremental gain is accruing only to the major online platforms.
Prada closes its acquisition of Versace. Nike announced more changes in the boardroom. Superdry and Nike got called out for greenwashing claims. Toyota launched the GR GT sports car. Unilever ice cream spin-out ousted independent board chairwoman of Ben & Jerry’s.
Netflix moved forward with a $72 billion bid for Warner Studios and HBO Max. Paramount intervened. Vanity Fair ran a tell-all interview with The White House chief-of-staff. President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the BBC moved forward.
Facebook sunset Messenger apps for Windows and macOS. PayPal applied to become a bank. The Pax Silica Declaration was signed by nine nations—the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Australia to bolster the semiconductor supply chain from Chinese pressure.
How 2025 memed?
YouTuber This is Antwon nailed in his description of the year as The Slop Era to capture how generative AI had captured culture in a similar manner to all things internet in culture from about 1994 onwards as the dotcom era kicked off through to the millennial bust.
404 Media discussed the phenomenon at SxSW, specifically why slop content happens.
Much of it was created by more technically-oriented people in the Philippines, the Middle East or South Asia who were looking to go viral. The reason why they did it was not to become famous per se but to gain vitality and get paid by Facebook’s creator programme.
In essence, the slop wasn’t for you or me, but designed to directly target the algorithm and then the creator gets a small share of the subsequent ad revenue. The model worked as a side hustle only because venture-backed AI models are providing a surplus of free tokens to these creators through farmed trial accounts.
By October, ‘AI slop’ was used as a pejorative for any artwork developed with the help of generative AI including a large public art mural in Chicago.
The FT worried about what it was doing to our online experience and work lives.
I have finished my strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency and am now taking bookings for strategic engagements. I can start immediately – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Counterinsurgency was one of several books that seemed interesting and that I bought during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 which I am slowly working my way through.
David Kilcullen
David Kilcullen is a former Australian military officer, who is an academic working at University of New South Wales, Canberra. Back in 2005 he advised the US government for a year while it dealt with insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has since been advising various companies about aspects of international studies.
Counterinsurgency
Counterinsurgency is a collection of his writings for military and academic journals. It covers everything from a tactical guide to officers dealing with local communities to the history of Indonesia post-independence and its efforts to combat East Timorese looking to become independent.
Kilcullen’s Counterinsurgency interesting to read for several reasons:
Accessible writing: he writes really well making his subject areas very accessible to enquiring minds. For an academic, it was refreshingly jargon-free and articulated complex situations simply.
His how-to guides for US military officers serving in Afghanistan gave me an insight that I previously didn’t have from the media coverage.
As someone who had worked on Indonesian market campaigns for Indofoods and Qualcomm, knowing more about this complex country was rewarding. Kilcullen provides an accessible window into two points in the post-independence history of Indonesia.
One of the key things that I took away from Counterinsurgency was the fragility of knowledge in organisations. Much of the work that Kilcullen is doing in the first part of the book was instilling hard-won knowledge that the world’s militaries had learned from TE Lawrence tormenting the Great Arab Revolt onwards including Vietnam, various American cold war campaigns, the British in Malaya and Northern Ireland.
Militaries put a lot of effort into capturing the history of conflicts and spend a lot of time on lessons learned. This is far more effort than organisations generally put into place to learn from the likes of marketing campaigns, yet Kilcullen’s writing was valuable because that knowledge seemed to be slipping through the cracks of militaries.
If you have an enquiring mind about world affairs and history, I can recommend Counterinsurgency as a good read. Other book reviews can be found here.
I read the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) so you don’t have to when it came out at the end of November 2025. What’s interesting about these NSS documents is that they set a tone that will be difficult to turn around over the next five to ten years.
I have taken the document at face value as it mirrors many of the talking points of US politicians. I have looked at the document through three lens:
Ireland
European Union
UK
(I live in the UK, I am an Irish citizen and Ireland is part of the European Union).
Some of its key European diagnostics are accurate (but could be also said of the US):
Declining birth rates
Uncontrolled migration (the authors consider African and muslim migrants to Europe particularly problematic)
Economic stagnation (the US is in a similar place outside of the top performers of the NASDAQ)
Deindustrialisation (again a problem that is repeated in the US)
The recently released NSS from the Trump administration represents a an end to an American-led west. It replaces “collective security” with ‘transactional realism’ and targets the European Union’s current political trajectory as a ‘civilisational realignment’. By comparison Russia makes little to no appearance in the document and China is considered mostly in terms of economic power rivalry.
While the US has declared victory in major conflicts via aggressive unilateralism, it now seeks to dismantle “globalist” structures. For Ireland, the UK, and the EU, all are now facing challenges from the US as well as Russia, China and Iran.
European impact
The NSS outlines four pillars that directly impact transatlantic relationships:
The US views NATO as a burden-sharing network, not a permanent umbrella, and explicitly threatens to withhold support from “free-riders”.
“Reindustrialization” is the highest priority. The US will use tariffs to force supply chains home. it considers net zero efforts as an economic suicide act.
The US will bypass EU institutions to cultivate relationships with rightwing populist parties. It views Western Europe’s current migration and social policies as “civilizational erasure”.
A re-assertion of the Monroe Doctrine. The US claims total dominance over the Western Hemisphere and warns European powers against interfering there.
Impact & Mitigation Strategies
🇮🇪 For Ireland
The NSS explicitly mentions a “sentimental attachment” to Ireland. Dublin must ruthlessly exploit this cultural link to secure exemptions from new tariffs, bypassing Brussels where necessary.
Reframe Ireland not as an offshore tax hub, but as a ‘secure node’ in the American supply chain. Emphasise that Irish pharma is safer than Asian alternatives and relies on highly-skilled professionals.
Ireland’s military neutrality is a liability in this document. it isn’t in a defence agreement with the US and he country can’t meet the 5% spending target that the US expects of ‘allies’. Instead, it must heavily invest in cybersecurity and transatlantic cable protection, framing this as its contribution to “collective security” without violating neutrality.
Ireland needs to plan, which would take longer to execute; to have a version of Singapore’s poison pill or pufferfish defence strategy. But this would be adapted for Ireland’s own context and needs in order to maintain its neutrality and sovereignty.
🇬🇧 For the United Kingdom
The US questions whether demographic changes in the UK will make it an ally in the future. However, the UK is better positioned than the EU to pivot.
The NSS seeks “fair, reciprocal trade deals”. The UK should prioritise a bilateral Free Trade Agreement, offering alignment on US export controls (especially regarding China) in exchange for market access.
The UK cannot afford 5% GDP on defence immediately, but it can get closer than the EU. An option would be to position itself as the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and the primary partner for the US “Golden Dome” missile defence project, solidifying the special relationship through technology transfer rather than just troop numbers.
The US Administration hates “regulatory suffocation”. The UK can aggressively deregulate its financial and tech sectors to mirror the US model, making it the preferred “docking station” for US capital in Europe.
Longer term the UK needs to de-risk critical parts of its economy from the US, and work with other European nations to think about what it would do to have a successful a non-US NATO if the NSS document goes to its natural conclusion.
🇪🇺 For the European Union
The Threat: The document is openly hostile to the EU project, viewing it as a mechanism that “undermines political liberty”. It seeks to encourage internal dissent by supporting right wing populist “patriotic parties”. The 5% defense target is designed to break the current European social contract model.
The 5% demand is likely a negotiating tactic to force 3% or 3.5%. The EU must immediately announce a massive, coordinated purchase of American military hardware at least in the short term, (while investing in European, friend-shored (Australian, Canadian, Korean, Japanese, Singaporean and Turkish) substitutive systems in the longer term.) The short term move buys tactical goodwill and addresses the immediate capability gap.
The US priority is winning the economic war with China. The EU has some leverage if it aligns 100% with US export controls and sanctions on Beijing. Brussels must trade access to the Chinese market for security guarantees from Washington in the short term.
The NSS attacks Europe’s “radical gender ideology” and “Net Zero” focus. (The origins of these beliefs are actually American in nature, a nuance the NSS authors fail to appreciate). To maintain relations, the EU Commission may need to de-politicise trade talks in the short-term, with a view to de-risking in the longer term. The short term trade focus purely on transactional economics and dropping social/climate conditionality in dealings with the US.
Summary
The 2025 NSS is a US roadmap for a post-European world.
Don’t appeal to “shared values” or “international law.” The NSS explicitly rejects “idealistic” foreign policy.
Offer concrete, transactional benefits: secure supply chains, purchase orders for US weapons, and alignment against China.
Move towards a European and friend-shored defence procurement and sustainment over the longer term, as the US may no longer be the arsenal of democracy in the future, if you take the NSS at face value.
Plan to replace specialist US systems over time as access and replenishment may diminish and have processes to takeover NATO governance in the absence of American leadership.
You can find the US National Security Strategy here.
Mico – A vibrant new way to talk with Copilot | Product Hunt – Strategy wise I have mixed feelings about it. People are already anthropomorphising LLMs and the full impact of that is still yet to be understood – I don’t think its universally good. However, we’ve already got there with Mico as a character. I imagine that fluent objects like Mico does make services stickier.
In this respect Mico looks like the kind of moral trap Meta, Bytedance have fallen into on their social media platforms.
Then there is the Clippy trauma now encapsulated as a drop of fleum – but that’s age bracketed so likely means nothing to younger cohorts.
On the other hand from a marketing effectiveness perspective, if Microsoft use Mico in brand advertising it might work well as a fluent object and boost their brand building performance. Reminded me a lot of British Gas’ Willo the Wisp character.
The 12th floor of 18 On Lan Street, a Ginza-style commercial building in Central, was handed over to Surplus Inc for HK$34 million (US$4.4 million) on Friday, according to Land Registry records. That represented a 65 per cent loss for the previous owner, Zhou Shubo, who bought the floor for HK$96 million in 2013.
Kanika Sam Ang was a director at Surplus, according to Companies Registry data. Sam Ang has been associated with the family of tycoon Tony Tandijono, who owns Cambodia-based President Airlines, Phnom Penh casino Holiday Palace and a travel agency in Hong Kong.
Gen Z Men So Scared of Getting Filmed They’ve Stopped Dating | Rolling Stone – It ends up fueling mistrust in many young men and can turn interactions into battlegrounds where boys feel they must protect their egos. Over time, empathy can go away and suspicion takes its place. Instead of feeling comfortable being genuine, sometimes they second-guess every word or message, wondering how it might be judged, shared, or mocked. But then it takes a turn and that’s why young men may retreat into online spaces that confirm the suspicions they have and help to reinforce negative stereotypes about girls. This causes a Cold War among genders where each side is suspicious of each other and doesn’t have empathy. In these divided spaces, interactions become games of defensive accusation and people grow untrustworthy of one another. – Failing is part of success and of life
Theft Bisect – via Matt Muir ‘This exists because, seemingly, the Met Police are too dumb to make this themselves’ – you can read an explanation as to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ behind its existence here, but generally this is just a smart idea, simply-executed.‘
Chinese experts criticised the series of statements, saying they reflect some Australia politicians’ anxiety and bias toward China’s technological and military progress. Moreover, they said the spy chief’s remarks reveal an arrogance rooted in the belief that Western political system is superior – Global Times is a Chinese government published newspaper.
Software
ChatEurope – slow and would have been ok a few years ago
Nvidia faces Washington heat over alleged Huawei ties | DigiTimes – US lawmakers are ramping up scrutiny of China’s AI and semiconductor sectors, tightening oversight from corporate ties to capital flows to reinforce Washington’s edge in the global AI competition.
