YouTuber aini does good videos that analyse sociological and cultural subjects, so a video on East Asian beauty standards was inevitable. East Asian beauty standards are even more important now due to the cultural impact that they have:
Korean and Japanese beauty products that have become popular from BB cream to SK-II
Filter / camera effects mobile apps – you can see their influence looking at how Cardi B does her make-up
Soft power assets: Hallyu and anime popularity – it affects the aesthetics of this content
China
Huawei building automotive ecosystem without making its own cars – Huawei will not build cars on its own, but will continue to strengthen its automotive ecosystem alliance and platform, integrating R&D efforts of related carmakers to provide diverse resources of smart systems, software, chips and other aspects – interesting profile by Taiwanese technology news outlet DigiTimes
Interesting that proposes that cyberpunk owes as much to Japanese psyche during late bubble Japanese miracle culture as opposed to the writings of American authors Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. It reflects angst, consumerism and accelerated technology.
Cybersecurity Label for U.S. Coming as Early as April – EE Times – 600-plus companies that have joined the ioXt Alliance to help it build confidence in Internet of Things products will be among the first to experience the national cybersecurity label NIST is developing for consumer Internet of Things (IoT) products and consumer software products—as soon as April
Why The Chinese Balloon Was a Necessary Wake-Up Call – Recent events have shown that terrorism is not the only threat to the U.S. homeland. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine shattered not only the 75-year peace in Europe but also Americans’ sense of security, particularly when the Kremlin has threatened nuclear escalation. Relations with Beijing have also deteriorated to a 40-year low, punctuated by the threat of Chinese aggression against Taiwan and other regional allies and covert activities within the United States
Visvim’s Toshiyuki Ueno in this film made in partnership with Porsche Japan, as we learn about the fundamental philosophy of ‘monozukuri’, or craftsmanship, behind the storied Japanese brand, as well as Ueno-san’s joy of ownership with long-lasting products.
Ueno’s joy of ownership comes from products that are potential candidates of what I called on this blog ‘heirloom design‘. Something that might develop a patina, but manages to last a lifetime. EDC or everyday carry is a category of products designed around the joy of ownership. Products over engineered and made of easy to service parts, yet are used everyday.
One can see this joy of ownership ethos in Visvim’s own products such as their iconic daypack. These look superficially like the classic Jansport design, but are over built in order ensure the bag outlasts the owner.
The joy of ownership is at odds with many aspects of our modern world. People no longer have digital or music collections. Instead relying on play lists on streaming services to give them the right muzak for whatever they are doing at the time. Online business Rent The Runway does away with the joy of ownership and curation of your look, you no longer need a wardrobe beyond the basics. Luxury brands are now talking about a circular economy play where consumers are encouraged to only enjoy the joy of ownership for a short while and they might then be resold. At the other end, fast fashion from Shein and H&M.
The much prescribed ethos of fast failure, agile methodologies and Facebook’s ‘move fast and break things’ are a world away from the philosophy behind the joy of ownership. This is the reason why Bang & Olufsen is a shadow of its former self, yet a vintage BeoSystem still provides the joy of ownership. More related content to the joy of ownership can be found here.
Xi Jinping shows his strength by muscling women away from power – Nikkei Asia – China’s path toward becoming a modern socialist country, as officials describe their aim, has historically been framed as incorporating gender egalitarianism. “Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole,” Mao Zedong wrote in 1955. By this measure, one would expect the Chinese Communist Party to at least signal that it cares about women’s representation in 2022. But last month’s 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party broke tradition by elevating 24 men and no women to the party’s Politburo, omitting its usual token female for the first time in 25 years. Women took just 11 of 205 seats on the new party Central Committee. Loyalty and utility to the top leader, above qualifications or affirmative action-style standards, are now the major determinants of officials’ prospects for promotion. Party leader Xi Jinping no longer feels any obligation to gesture toward gender equality – what this misses out on is that Mao Zedong’s public and private conduct were in sharp contrast. Mao was an avowed paedophile.
TikTok ‘ghost mall’ indicator of problems with Malaysia’s failed Silicon Valley | South China Morning Post – “It’s the only Malay-Muslim concept mall in Malaysia,” Abdul said, adding that he feels attached to the mall as “there is a brotherhood here.”While the mall didn’t have many customers, I was struck by the lively camaraderie among the staffers working there. Outside the mall, I found a singer performing for a small crowd. A couple meters away stood a unit where a popular Thai restaurant once operated. While it’s listed as operating on Google Reviews, one of Fadzil’s staff told me it has “closed down for good.” The restaurant appeared to once have good reviews online, with diners describing the food as “affordable” and “delicious.” The lot was padlocked and the tinted glass walls obscured what was inside, but my fat zoom lens captured an eerie image of the restaurant’s interior. Kitchen tools were piled in a corner and dozens of bottles of beverages stood packaged together, unused. It looked like a scene that had been quickly and hastily abandoned. – retail is tough at the best of times, but there is also a constant tale in Malaysia of expensive white elephants and failed economic policies once it had been decolonised
Ethics
Filmmaker Andrew Callaghan Says Cable News “Ramped People up” for Jan. 6 – I think that January 6th is much more of a riot than it is an insurrection. And I think that the mainstream media is endlessly focusing on it because it’s, it’s very good eye candy. It makes great news. It makes all conservatives look like absolute morons, and it’s good for selling ads. So it was a terrible thing, but there’s reasons they’re dragging it out, and they’ll continue to drag it out until the next major conservative fuck up like that. I don’t feel, necessarily, that the frontline brainwashed Capitol riot soldier is to blame for what happened. I think it’s the people who push them into action, particularly on the fringe as well. I think mainstream media and social media play a role in ramping up division, but I think it’s people like Alex [Jones] and Enrique [Tarrio] who really are primarily just merchandise salesmen. We have a serious problem with media echo chambers and informational literacy in this country. We have to take it upon ourselves to be more educated and think on a different level. So what’s in it for influencers like them? The “MAGA-sphere” allows for a ridiculous array of hustles and grifts. There’s Forgiato Blow, who built a rap career around the MAGA train. Enrique Tarrio runs the largest right-wing t-shirt shop on the Internet. Alex Jones makes millions of dollars selling brain pills, basically. There’s so many ways to make money in the MAGA world. It’s really appealing for someone trying to get their start as an entrepreneur or a politically active person – probably one of the smarter views that I have read on January 6.
Siegfried Muller’s interview shows the complexity in modern German history. Muller was plied with alcohol and interviewed by East German interviewers who then put together this film (presumably with editing). For Muller, the threat of communism was real. You can read more on Muller here.
The War in Ukraine Highlights European Rifts – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – Despite the destruction Russia is wreaking on Ukraine, both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and sections of his Social Democratic Party and business lobbies hanker after the status quo ante. Herein lies the second rift. It is linked to EU member states’ varied historical experiences and the resulting threat perceptions. The EU as a peace project was finessed over the years without a voice from the Eastern or Central Europeans. They had to endure living under the dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Today, Western Europe, particularly France and Germany, considers a future European security architecture involving Russia in some form. For the East Europeans, security is about defending themselves against Russia. That is why the latter want Ukraine to win and Russia to be defeated. For them, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens Europe’s stability and security—a threat that would be compounded if Russia were to win
Health
Race is on to develop new generation of weight-loss drugs | Financial Times – this looks like a Viagra like gold rush, on the plus side there is a lot of scientific progress being made. The biggest barriers are socio-cultural in nature. Disclosure, I worked on the global launch of Wegovy – the current category leading treatment
Hong Kong committee can bar foreign lawyers from national security cases: Beijing — Radio Free Asia – “Now the national security committee gets to decide what is and isn’t a matter of national security in all cases, not just national security cases, but in any other court cases and also in all matters of government policy, without being subject to judicial review,” he said. “They could claim that pandemic prevention was a matter of national security, or education,” Yam said. “It’s not just about the judicial system.” “It affects legislation and anything that takes place throughout the entire government system.” – Australian lawyer Kevin Yam points out the weakness that anyone using Hong Kong as a legal jurisdiction in contracts should be concerned about. Is the counter-party connected to the government, in a strategically important sector, government owned or supported by government loans? Do they employ mainland employees who might be affected by the contract. All of this could fall within the national security law. Another take by Hong Kong based legal scholar and former judge Henry Litton: HKU Legal Scholarship Blog: Henry Litton: Red Alert: Hong Kong Judicial Independence Under Existential Threat (Comment on the Admission of Owen KC). Samuel Bickett’s take on things here: Beijing’s New Year’s surprise: awarding itself broad new powers over Hong Kong and NPC Observer: Explainer: NPCSC’s Interpretation of Hong Kong National Security Law over Jimmy Lai’s Foreign Defense Counsel – Beyond the confines of Lai’s case and the specific issue it raised, the [NatSec] Committee’s seemingly broad and unreviewable power to “make [enforceable] judgments and decisions” on whether an issue of national security is involved, regardless of setting, could be cause for concern. It awaits to be seen whether and to what extent it would invoke this newly declared authority to deal with other situations in the future.
Three ways Big Tech got it wrong | Financial Times – Most of Big Tech got rich on software, which is easily updatable and basically free to distribute at scale. Such online innovation rightly places a huge premium on “failing fast”: getting a product out quickly, building a following and fixing the bugs later. The same is simply not true for a car, a medicine or even a new flavour of packaged meat. They have to work correctly and meet regulatory standards right off the bat. Production facilities and distribution networks cannot be conjured out of thin air, or easily amended after the fact. In the physical realm, an innovator can see its lead evaporate in the face of competition from rivals with experience in production and distribution. Tesla is discovering this the hard way. Tesla’s share of the US electric vehicle market has dropped below 65 per cent from 79 per cent five years ago. S&P Global Mobility predicts it will fall below 20 per cent by 2025 as other makers bring out electric trucks and cheaper models faster than Tesla can build new factories
A few things on this. I believe that hydrogen will play a far bigger role in the energy mix for transport. These cars are Toyota Mirai vehicles. Secondly, look at how easy it is for the workers to get the fit and finish right on the cars, which says a lot about the precision of their component manufacturers to get to Toyota’s legendary reliable, rattle-free vehicles.
William Davies · The Seductions of Declinism: Stagnation Nation · LRB 4 August 2022 – The claim that everything has been getting worse for decades is a gift to Thatcherites and Brexiters, who promise a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the nation, and would like to banish those who talk down Britain’s prospects. Edgerton went to considerable lengths in The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A 20th-Century History to dispute the claim that the interwar and postwar British economy was a failure, or that it needed ‘reviving’ in the way Thatcher promised. For Edgerton (and the Resolution Foundation appears to agree), Britain’s current economic malaise began under Thatcher, when rent-seeking via the housing market, privatisation and financial ‘innovation’ became the basis of Britain’s economic growth. But even Edgerton would agree that we are now in a very bad way. The poor quality of the Tory leadership candidates and the unseriousness of the debate between them creates the impression of a country that can now only speak to itself in slogans, oaths and insults, and has no capacity to describe or explain its problems. Away from the theatre of the leadership contest, the signs are that Britain’s elites now intend to stake everything on another financial free-for-all. Inexplicably, the Bank of England recently abolished the regulations that impose affordability criteria on the sale of mortgages, meaning that lenders no longer need to check whether borrowers have the capacity to repay if interest rates rise further. A new Financial Services Bill, supported by Sunak and the current chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, will challenge the power of the Bank of England to regulate financial services, with the aim of releasing the City of London to engage in greater risk-taking. The Brexiters’ ideology, according to which Britain remains restricted by its conformity to EU rules, may have one more hurrah, if it can liberate speculators for another few years before the Ponzi schemes finally collapse
Fake ‘Rothschild’ Was Chased by Russian Organized Crime When She Took Pictures With Trump at Mar-a-Lago – OCCRP – the self-confessed grifter was a Ukrainian immigrant tangled up with Russian organized crime, a joint investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and OCCRP has found. OCCRP and the Post-Gazette revealed in August how Yashchyshyn gained access to Mar-a-Lago without any background checks, making at least four trips to the estate in two days. The investigation and an FBI action that same month to retrieve documents from Mar-a-Lago renewed questions about security at the private club that has hosted powerful U.S. and world leaders. Those questions will only grow with the new revelations that the fake Rothschild was being chased by a serious organized crime figure as she mingled with prominent club guests and the ex-president himself.
Singapore redevelopment of its harbour in the early 1980s is fascinating. The area is now a mix of bars, cafes and restaurants. Among the buildings lost was a cinema built and owned by The Shaw Organisation – who were responsible for the post-war boom in kung fu martial arts films and even helped finance Blade Runner. The Shaws came out of a merchant background and were big in pre-war Shanghai as one of the big three film studios. They diversified into amusement parks over a decade before Disney did; though the Shaws were not as single-minded in their focus on ‘family-friendly’ experiences as their US counterpart.
The limits of growth in Singapore, some of these factors feel very Brexity, partly due to neo-liberalism
KanDenko is a Japanese construction company that specialises in infrastructure. This advert communicates effectively what they do in a creative manner. KanDenko must have spent a good deal of money to have this film produced. But it is well worth it.
Vintage Singapore
Footage of Singapore‘s North Boat Quay circa 1983. This area has now been redeveloped with the shop houses refurbished and now holding cafés, restaurants and bars. What this video shows is traditional Chinese life that would have been similar to the mainland prior to Mao’s ‘new China’ which culminated in the cultural revolution.
Thankfully overseas Chinese and Taiwan had preserved the culture and beliefs.
Stussy x Nike
Nike and Stüssy have collaborated on bringing an old Nike model back to life.
New Order’s Blue Monday on 1930s instruments
The BBC made a video of Orchestra Obsolete using early electronic instruments (including a Thermin) alongside traditional instruments to reproduce New Order’s Blue Monday
Distorted Kowloon City
When I first saw this footage of Distorted Kowloon City, I was reminded of the locative art discussed in William Gibson’s novel Spook Country. I read this shortly after being switched on to where 2.0 services while working at Yahoo! on search and Flickr offerings. Yahoo! bought Whereonearth, to better understand what ‘local’ meant with its InternetLocality product set. At the time Whereonearth worked with Three on local mobile services and was a data provider to the likes of insurance companies and credit reference agencies. Yahoo! engineers like Dan Catt and Paul Hammond worked on projects like ZoneTag and including location data in the EXIF metadata of photography; something we just accept as normal on smartphones now.
Distorted Kowloon City is a piece of immersive digital abstract art. Or according to The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC)
Kowloon City is full of collective memories of Hong Kong people. Spanning the old town with restaurants and specialty shops, Checkered Hill (also known as Radar Hill), tree-lined parks, the historical remains of the Kowloon Walled City and the former Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon City is as diverse as Hong Kong.
To re-interpret how we perceive, how we feel and how we see Kowloon City, moon.moon weaved the sensory data elements of the real world into an 360-degree audio-visual experience with the aid of original music and technologies (e.g. Point Cloud Processing and drone photography), allowing the public to re-discover Kowloon City from abstract art perspective.
Design Inspire | HKTDC
From this explanation, its a mix of history, Hong Kong culture and geography blended into the art work.
The work was done by local digital artist Moon Hung.
Fractured markets
The effect of low interest rates in the aftermath of 2008 on financial investors was to encourage increased risk taking and one of the first casualties of interest rate increases were UK pensions under management. The FT goes into more depth in a video documentary.
Back to 1992 with DJ Vertigo. I knew DJ Vertigo or to call him is proper name Steve from my time shopping at 3Beat Records where he worked behind the counter. His Grin tapes brought a steady stream of non-record buyers into the store. Weekends saw him DJ’ing across the north of England in the early 90s including big nights at the time like Maximes in Wigan, Ark and The Gallery which were both in Leeds and The Orbit @ Morley in the greater Leeds area. At the time 3 Beat was having its status THE record store was being challenged by Probe Records that was around the corner at 9 Slater Street. There was a new manager who got in some amazing house and techno alongside Probe’s usual material. Down on Matthew Street you had the Groover Record Bar with Rusty, Les Calvert and Dave Graham.
Over time, DJ Vertigo’s legacy got cemented as tapes were passed on, copied or transferred to digital. The other names faded away in terms of their cultural relevance.
Last I heard DJ Vertigo was playing regular ‘old school’ club nights in Leeds for middle aged people to relive their youth and young people to hear the sounds that had excited their gen X peers.
The Peripheral
Amazon Studios have adapted William Gibson’s book The Peripheral, which I enjoyed reading when it came out. I look forward to each new episode. Here’s the trailer
Porsche have built a homage to the Safari Rally, Oman Rally and Paris-Dakar Rally cars that Dave Richards (of Prodrive fame) used to build on Porsche 911 SC RS cars.
I personally would want it jacked up a bit more for ground clearance and portal axles a la a Mercedes Unimog. There’s also no mud flaps, but otherwise its an interesting looking car.
DJ Kenta
What I have been listening to this week. Japanese DJ, DJ Kenta. Its kind of like an upbeat version of a Giles Patterson set. More here.
Kherson offensive
William Spaniel does a good job of providing an analysis of the Ukrainian effort to take back Kherson.
A more nuanced view on the Ukraine invasion in the air from a RUSI analyst.
The Line or Neom is a building project in Saudi Arabia. It is a 110 mile or 170 kilometre long building. It will be 200 metres wide and 500 metres or 1,600 feet tall. Inside the structure will be a city to house 9 million people, amenities like school and leisure, their work and public transportation.
https://flic.kr/p/2nBSEqB
NEOM advert in the FT
The Line will be run on renewable energy and involve some sort of smart grid to optimise the living experience. They’ve apparently already started the earth works on construction and expect to have it completed by 2030.
Dystopian
The Line has been criticised in western media as dystopian. The mind immediately turns to science fiction visions like Judge Dredd’s Mega City One or William Gibson‘s cityscapes in his sprawl trilogy books: Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. They would likely consider ‘ideal’ to look more like the Bosco Verticale in Milan, or the STH BNK in Melbourne, Australia, both of which look very nice. However, isn’t necessarily a panacea as one forestry expert noted.
″I think it’s very important that trees are given space,” Cecil Konijnendijk, from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, told CNBC.
“We know that soil — what we call soil volume — is really important, so the trees have to have space underground, maybe even more so than over ground,” he added.
“And then of course trees will have to have time to develop, so you won’t have instant trees. You’ll have to take the time to make sure they grow up and then they provide the benefits that we want to get from them.”
And it wasn’t just the media who were critical, there were people who spoke out on social media or wrote to the FT like Mark Hudson of Blandford Forum, Dorset.
While the developers claim that it has green credentials and is a harbinger of a low carbon future, there are concerns about its effect on local fauna, flora and migrating birds.
Retrofuturism
https://flic.kr/p/eEXuvW
Moonwalk 1 Artist: Andy Warhol, 1987 Media: Silkscreen on paper Description: The famous image of astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon has become an icon of popular culture. It became material for Warhol’s silkscreen series of nationally known images printed on vibrant, retro, poster colors. Image Credit: Andy Warhol for the NASA Art Program
When I saw the adverts for The Line, I was reminded of two things. NASA’s Art Program and the visual futurism of Syd Mead.
https://flic.kr/p/2dhVfdH
A poster apparently designed by Syd Mead for the 1983 World Sports Fair in Japan
Syd Mead created designs and conceptual art for clients including Ford Motor Company and Philips Electronics.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Mead and his company provided architectural renderings, both interior and exterior, for clients including Intercontinental Hotels, 3D International, Harwood Taylor & Associates, Don Ghia, Gresham & Smith and Philip Koether Architects.
As the 1980s came around Mead developed working relationships a number of Japanese corporations including Sony, Minolta, Dentsu, Dyflex, Tiger Corporation, Seibu, Mitsukoshi, Bandai, NHK and Honda.
Mead cemented his place on popular culture with his work on
Mead’s world, was the world that my generation were promised but was never delivered. Instead we got social media. (If you want to see more of Mead’s work I suggest Sentury and Sentury II.)
https://flic.kr/p/2nDi9tF
NEOM advert in the FT
NASA has an art program that is still running, all be it in a diminished form today. During the 1970s NASA Art Program artists and researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center explored what a future space colony might look like.
Toroidal Colony – Cutaway view, exposing the interior. Art work: Rick Guidice. NASA Ames Research Center
https://flic.kr/p/nrRGMa
Torus Interior. Interior view. Art work: Don Davis. NASA Ames Research Center
That feeling of retrofuturism might not be accidental. An architect writing in the FT commented on the similarity between The Line and a concept proposed (as more a provocation or thought experiment) by a group of Italian artists called Superstudio who proposed a white gridded wall across the Arizona desert in the late 1960s called Il MonumentoContinuo or Continuous Monument in English.
The case for a city like The Line
Firstly, Saudi Arabia has to do something, doing nothing isn’t an option.
At the moment, the population is growing at about 1.65% a year and the average age of the population is just below 30 years old. By comparison the population in the UK is 43. Energy consumption tripled from 1981 to 2010 and if things carry on like this the country will soon move from being the worlds largest energy exporter, to a net importer.
The Saudis only have so much time to do something before the favourable petro-economy conditions turn against them.
The demand for oil won’t dry up completely, but the economics change when oil becomes about supplying legacy transport in the developing world, which will likely go on for a long while, together with a small amount of vintage vehicles run by enthusiasts.
To give you an idea of how long this can be. Leaded petrol started its phase out in cars back in 1975, in the US, and only stopped being sold in 2021. Leaded fuel is still used for some aviation power plants.
Then there will also be a continued need for chemical feedstocks for the likes of the pharmaceuticals sector and manufacturing. At the moment Saudi Arabia’s GDP is just under 600 billion pounds a year, but that doesn’t mean that it will stay at this level for long, or by how much it will decline.
Then there is the challenge of making Arabian peninsula liveable during climate change. They’ve seen the Arab spring in Egypt and Tunisia, or the Syrian civil war and they don’t want it to happen in Saudi Arabia.
Concentrated populations in cities are better for the environment than having them spread out homesteading or living in suburbia. Less environmental impact delivering services. All of which Stewart Brand puts the case for; far more elegantly than I could in his Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.
Where does my own opinion lie on The Line?
I can understand why the Saudis have gone there. They have sound pragmatic reasons for doing something.
I also feel nostalgic about the childhood future I dreamed of seeing when I looked at Syd Mead and the NASA space colony art work in children’s science books and a sense of a bright future lost.
But I don’t know how much of it will actually work.
Will the Saudis be able to find design fixes for migrating birds or animals in the same way that roads have developed overpasses or underpasses in the west?
Will the smart city systems work?
What about the renewable energy capacity?
Will there be an economy inside The Line? What will it look like?
What kind of society will be constructed inside The Line?
Will The Line be able to cope with an extreme weather event like a sandstorm, or the flash floods from rare rainstorms that occasionally happen even in the desert?
How will the infrastructure be repaired or upgraded once its all built?
Will the Saudis be able to afford completing The Line, or will they run out of money? The 2008 financial crisis crushed development in Dubai the following year and the aftershocks are still being felt through stretching out debt deadlines. Dubai property developers like Limitless went through successive rounds of financial restructuring. The Line is a project on a far grander scale.
