Ged Carroll

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  • Rewatching Wong Kar wai

    My love of films by Wong Kar wai came at a time of changing media. In the early 2000s I watched the films the first time after I got a portable multi-region DVD player and there had been a massive surge in video labels including Artificial Eye and Tartan publishing arthouse titles. This provided a great cost-effective way to explore and experience world cinema and I gravitated towards Japanese and Hong Kong cinema.

    I was already familiar with traditional martial arts films and the ‘gun fu’ of John Woo. Wong Kar wai was Hong Kong’s answer to French new wave auteurs.

    Around the same time, I ended up dating someone who lived in Hong Kong when we bonded over Faye Wong’s performance in Chungking Express. In a moment of delicious irony, I got to watch Wong Ka wai’s one ‘western’ film My Blueberry Nights while staying in Hong Kong.

    While Wong Ka wai’s filmography wasn’t the reason why I moved to Hong Kong, it was a reason why I moved to city and had the privilege of living there for a while.

    This time around I was working my way through Criterion’s World of Wong Kar wai boxset which had been bought for my birthday during COVID time.

    wong kar wai

    The Wong Kar wai boxset contains:

    • As Tears Go By
    • Days of Being Wild
    • Chungking Express
    • Fallen Angels
    • Happy Together
    • In The Mood for Love
    • 2046

    As Tears Go By

    As Tears Go By was released in 1988. It is one of Wong Ka wai’s most conventional films from a Hong Kong perspective. Andy Lau plays the protagonist Wah, a triad soldier. Wong borrowed from the plot line in of Martin Scorsese’s 1973 film Mean Streets in terms of the story revolving around dynamic of two friends, one of whom is irresponsible. It’s a great stylish film, but if you told me that it had been made by Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark or Johnnie To, I’d have believed you. Hong Kong cinema audiences loved it and it would be another 25 years before Wong made another film as popular with local cinema goers.

    Days of Being Wild

    1990’s Days of Being Wild is often considered by some to be part of an informal trilogy, the others being In The Mood for Love and 2046. Stylistically it features love, loss, similar pacing, the use of inner narratives and experiments with colour. Thematically they are sensitive to the passage of time and have a vice-like hold on emotional memory. But the threads between the characters aren’t really bought together until the next film in the trilogy. Tony Leung’s character and is given the name of ‘Gambler’ is only wordlessly introduced right at the end of Days of Being Wild. He only becomes known as Chow Mo wan in the next film: In The Mood for Love.

    Leslie Cheung was ideally cast as a lost, rootless, self-absorbed drifter Yuddy in the film. Yuddy has a hole at the centre of his being that he is unable to fill. Like many dislocated Chinese in Hong Kong between the civil war and the cultural revolution he drifts.

    Yuddy is described as a legless bird, only touching down with death. Critics have interpreted this as pre-1997 handover anxiety. An article published on the Hong Kong Film Critics Society website described it for me best

    At the time, they were echoes of Hong Kongers’ sentiments under the looming 1997 deadline. Leslie Cheung, who has a love-hate relationship with his foster mother and after a failed mission to find his biological mother, drifts in self-imposed exile, is a metaphor for the city caught between the two sovereign states of China and England.

    Set in the 60s, the film is filled with signifiers of nostalgia (props, costumes, music, scenery). Reminiscence is but a lament that the good of the present will not last. And Days of Being Wild is but an elegy for a Hong Kong caught between 1989 and 1997.

    The film follows Yuddy and the trail of emotional wreckage he leaves in his wake as he looks to track down his biological mother.

    Secondary threads follow Su Li zhen, played by Maggie Cheung and Carrie Lau’s performance as Leung Fung ying. Both of whom where Yuddy’s transient love interests.

    There is a scene where Yuddy looks to obtain an American passport and something about Cheung’s movement and the casual violence reminded me of Michael Madsen’s Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs released three years later. While Mr Blonde is nihilistic, he lacks the duality of Cheung’s character.

    Leslie Cheung gives a fantastic performance on screen and his tragic death 13 years later was a serious blow to Hong Kong film-making.

    Days of Being Wild wasn’t well received by Hong Kong cinema goers at the time, despite being well regarded by film critics everywhere. This adds to Wong Kar wai’s reputation as an auteur streets ahead of the audience. Which was a view I bought into the first time around.

    Having watched it again years later, I have some hypotheses as to why it didn’t do well.

    • While the dislocation and drifting reflected life for many in early 1960s Hong Kong, it didn’t match the go-go economy and Lion Rock can-do spirit of Hong Kongers in the following three decades. Younger audiences wouldn’t be able to relate to it in the same way. Cinema audiences tend to be younger than the general population, so that disconnect makes a degree of sense.
    • After the Sino-British joint declaration was signed in 1984, a pre-handover anxiety hung over Hong Kong. KMT supporting newspapers gradually closed down or pivoted their editorial style. Astronaut families became commonplace with upper middle class children based outside the city in Vancouver or Australia while their parents made money in the run up to go-go environment of the time. The second passport, gave the family a bolt hole in case things went wrong. Hong Kong cinema goers wanted the escapism of action films, gambling movies and comedy.
    • It is very different in pace as a film compared to its high-octane peers at the time from the likes of John Woo. This time I got to see the original Hong Kong trailer of Days of Being Wild – and could understand how you could go into the cinema expecting something with much more pace rather than the dream-like experience much of Days of Being Wild gives you.
    • The ending came abruptly and without context.

    Chungkung Express

    1994’s Chungking Express is two views of modern Hong Kong. Trading hub Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui and the Midnight Express takeaway restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong. While it is a romantic comedy of sorts and varies in pace, it also has the qualities of what we now expect in a Wong Kar wai film. The focus on time, distance and emotional memory – but with a much lighter touch than days of being wild.

    The film is anthology of two stories with retail worker Faye being the one serendipitous point of connection that holds both stories together.

    Takeshi Kaneshiro plays alongside fellow Taiwanese actress Bridget Lin in the first story. He is estranged from his girlfriend May relying on calls to her parents and tins of pineapple which is her favourite food.

    In the second story tells of how Cop 663, played by Tony Leung is left by his air stewardess girlfriend and acquires a stalker while getting over his old love.

    Both stories caught the urban energy of 1990s Hong Kong and resonated better with audiences. What is more remarkable is how fast the film was made in an improvisational way with guerrilla film making techniques. Its looseness was by design as Wong tried to mirror Haruki Murakami’s writing style on screen. The film was shot in a two-week break from editing Ashes of Time.

    The film brought Faye Wong to an international audience and cemented Wong Kar wai’s arthouse credentials.

    The film feels very now in terms of its style and even the use of old technology like camcorders and pagers on screen doesn’t pull you out of the film in the way I might have expected.

    Fallen Angels

    1995’s Fallen Angels was a surprise to me the first time I watched it. In some ways it goes back to As Tears Go By in its exploration of Hong Kong’s organised crime world. You have Wong Kar wai’s use of loose narrative, colour, tight spaces and urban energy.

    Compared to As Tears Go By it’s a slower paced film. It makes what now comes across as innovative use of close up wide angle photography that makes it look as if its shot on an iPhone decades before the modern iPhone came out. It also feels computer game-like in the action sequences. I can also understand why it has been compared to music videos in terms of style. Parts of the action sequence reminded me of Point Break in terms of the camera viewpoint. While it feels ‘intimate’ because of its claustrophobic shots, local cinema audiences didn’t relate to Fallen Angels.

    There is a duality to the film. Takeshi Kaneshiro plays Police Officer Ho Chi moo badge number 223 in Chungking Express. In Fallen Angels he is Hoo Chi moo, convict number 223.

    There are wider Wong Kar wai touches, in mid 20th century artefacts from 1960s Hong Kong architecture to the Enicar illuminated wall clock in the assassins base.

    (Enicar was a historic Swiss watch brand that was best known across Asia and China. The brand name is now owned by Wah Ming Hong who had been their distributor in China since the 1930s. One of my first memories of Hong Kong was giant building wrapping adverts for Enicar and another former Swiss, now Hong Kong watch company Solvil et Titus).

    Watching it this time, I had a nagging feeling that something had changed and sure enough when I searched online. I found that the film had been extensively cropped shot by shot and recoloured by Wong Kar wai in 2020, not always for the better.

    Happy Together

    Happy Together was released in 1997 and is still a highly regarded example of New Queer Cinema alongside the like of Querelle.

    As a work out of Hong Kong it’s remarkable. Hong Kong as a society is conservative and there is a don’t ask, don’t tell aspect to the treatment of the LGBTQI community in Hong Kong. Legislation is more advanced than Hong Kong society at large.

    Leslie Cheung was an ideal protagonist known for being a champion of the avant-garde and having on-screen characters that experimented in different forms and levels of masculinity.

    Happy Together‘s themes of displacement, exile, and the repeated line “Let’s start over” mirrored loneliness, heartbreak, the collective uncertainty and “fretful wanderlust” of Hong Kongers at the time. The film came out in Hong Kong just two months prior to the handover of Hong Kong to China.

    Happy Together was released with a Category III rating, meaning only those 18 and above can watch it. Primarily this was down to Hong Kong’s greater latitude for violence rather than sex on-screen. Wong Kar wai’s eye and treatment on camera means that Argentina feels rather like Hong Kong in the film.

    In The Mood For Love

    For many people, 2000’s In The Mood For Love is the gateway drug to Wong Kar wai films. I think that the Cantonese title ‘Flower-like Years’, ‘the prime of one’s youth’ suits it better. It’s the second film Wong’s informal trilogy, after Days of Being Wild.

    The contrast in pacing between In The Mood For Love and the previous film mirrored the move from frantic kinetic energy of colonial Hong Kong living on borrowed time to an oppressive study in stillness focused on longing for the past. Wong admitted in interviews that the hotel room number, 2046, where the protagonists get together to write represented the final year of Hong Kong’s ‘guaranteed‘ autonomy. The Shanghainese dialect spoken, outfits and food reflected Hong Kongers nostalgia for the post-civil war era of migration to Hong Kong as time of pain and hope.

    We are properly introduced to Tony Leung’s Chow Mo-wan character. Su Li zhen, played by Maggie Cheung adds the real line of continuity. We know it’s 1962, and probably at least a few years since Days of Being Wild. On one level their fortunes have improved Su now works as a secretary for a shipping company; Chow is a journalist. They are both unhappily married and find solace in each other’s company.

    It’s like David Lean’s Brief Encounter but with the colour and latent emotion dialled up through copious amounts of hallucinogen. The loneliness, missed connections, the weight of time, regret, longing and rootlessness feel even more intense in this film than any of Wong’s previous films. The also a sharp contrast with the licentious and violent elements in Wong’s previous films.

    I remember watching it the first time and being blown away by it visually without taking in the plot, performance and nuance layer throughout. I then revisited my old DVD copy several times later on.

    Wong lays out their collective journey of discovery in finding out that their respective partners are having an affair. This builds the closeness and tension them, as does the martial arts serial that they write together.

    (This always struck me as a nod the popularity of Hong Kong based authors like Liang Yusheng and Louis Cha who worked as newspaper journalists, before going on to write serials published in newspapers and magazines. Eventually their works would be adopted in Hong Kong films including Wong Kar wai’s own The Eagle Shooting Heroes and Ashes of Time; and TV series in Hong Kong, Taiwan and communist China).

    In The Mood For Love redefined the way male main actor roles were portrayed in Hong Kong cinema allowing greater character depth than was previously the case with gun fu, wuxia and action comedies. It gave the post-handover Hong Kong film industry a much-needed creative shot in the arm before the ‘China-Hong Kong’ joint ventures finally bled it dry.

    In The Mood For Love seemed to be the ground zero for Hong Kong mid 1960s nostalgia, such as the G.O.D ‘Bing Sutt Corner’ redesign of the Starbucks branch on Duddell Street in the central district of Hong Kong. Others got in on the act, 7-Eleven released a set of ‘Old Hong Kong’ phone charms.

    Hong_Kong_Duddell_Street_Starbucks

    Writing this post, I went back to find out what I had written about the phone charms.

    There is a wider trend of nostalgia in the city which 7 Eleven Hong Kong is tapping into.

    It is interesting because it reflects a widely held view that the bright new future offered by mainland China isn’t bright, attractive or desirable. This will likely cause trouble in for China and Hong Kong in the future, if it rolls out from the cultural zeitgeist into political aspects of Hong Kong life.

    There are times when I wish I was wrong.

    Nothing jarred from memory when I rewatched In The Mood For Love, but I had forgotten the documentary footage of President De Gaulle visiting Cambodia near the end.

    2046

    After In The Mood For Love, 2046 follows Chow Mo wan as he attempts to get Su Li zhen out of his system. The story also connects with Days of Being Wild with Carina Lau’s character still being heart-broken over the death of Yuddy, years later.

    There is a line in Tony Leung’s monologue that encapsulates 2046 the central plot premise really well.

    “Love is all a matter of timing, it’s no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. If I’d lived in another time or place then my story might have had a very different ending” – Tony Leung’s character Chow Mo-wan in 2046

    2046 captured post-Handover disillusionment, a community that realises its own ephemeral nature. Hong Kong’s specialness appears as suffering according to Stephen Teo – and I think he got it right.

    …a visually ravishing work that’s downright apocalyptic in its suffocating sense of dread and despair. – David Pountain, Little White Lies

    I finished the boxset, drained in a good way, but also disappointed, not in Wong Kar wai’s work but in the Hong Kong it now exists in. As it was once my home, I felt broken.

  • Pilot Parker & more inspiration

    This inspiration post is a mix of things that caught my eye from Pilot Parker to HyperCard.

    Pilot Parker

    pilot parker

    Pilot Parker is Malaysia Airlines mascot. I was familiar with him from the inflight duty-free catalogue. The inspiration for the film came from a moment shared by a young passenger who had flown with Malaysia Airlines. After her trip, she sent the airline a hand-drawn illustration of Pilot Parker along with a letter describing how the mascot brought her comfort during the journey. So the brand moved Pilot Parker from souvenir to fluent object.

    Lemon – lime facetime call.

    Apple had a week of things including more affordable devices (iPhone 17e and MacBook Neo) in a green-yellow colour. The company deleted all their TikTok account contents and then posted this video.

    @apple

    hello?

    ♬ original sound – apple

    20-somethings in the ad industry lost their minds, feeling seen and considering it revolutionary that large brands have humour and can navigate culture. They then filled LinkedIn with insightful posts to let all the oldster millennials know.

    Just leaving this one here, in case anyone notices. The lesson of the story is that everything old is new, especially the heuristic about being part of culture.

    Retrospective on HyperCard

    HyperCard was a powerful idea that didn’t have its time. I used it to run lab experiments during a brief time with Corning prior to my going to college. This video goes into real depth about what we missed.

    Voice recognition is older than you think

    I found this 1958 film of Victor Scheinman, at the time a high school student. He invented a solution that provided speech to text via a typewriter. It isn’t that far away from the speech recognition that I had on mobile phones from my Ericsson T39 through to my current iPhone.

    In his adult life Scheinman worked with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky and worked in the field of robotics in academia and the private sector. Scheinman went on to work with General Motors and Yaskawa Electric Corporation. Right up to his death Scheinman was an associate professor who still consulted at Stanford University.

    Scheinman’s high school experiment shows both how far we’ve come and yet how little we’ve progressed in comparison to the hype.

    Think with Google & Sir Martin Sorrell

    Think with Google interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell who was entertaining and consistent on themes he has been talking for the past few years. I found it interesting that he suspects marketing science is ‘over’. I don’t agree with him in this respect because software changes faster than wetware, but Sorrell instead has the CFO view within clients.

    Yet the favourite campaigns that he worked on were his work at Saatchi & Saatchi before he built WPP.

    Here’s the British Airways ‘Manhattan Landing‘ campaign from 1983 that Sir Martin named as the favourite campaign that he worked on.

    More marketing related content here.

  • March 2026 newsletter – (32) buckle my shoe

    March 2026 introduction – (32) buckle my shoe

    By some miracle, I have managed to make it to issue 32. Yes this is late, my excuse was reading The Persian, more on that below. In the jargon of the bingo hall 32 came up as ‘buckle my shoe’.

    https://flic.kr/p/w8zyP

    As I wrote this down I was reminded of a vivid memory from my early childhood. I was staying with my Granny on the family farm in rural Ireland. I would have been pre-school, maybe three years old.

    Like a magpie I was attracted to shiny things, and she had a pair of shoes with gold coloured decorative elements on them. They were horseshoe-shaped buckles, but didn’t serve any function beyond aesthetics.

    I managed to remove one unintentionally, it didn’t seem to take any effort. I realised it shouldn’t be off the shoe, so I returned it to her in my mind, by posting it under the closed door of her bedroom.

    I forgot about it. There was more important things to do like pat the friendly farm dog and feed soda bread crumbs from the breakfast table to the couple of coal tits that would show up at the back door after every meal.

    Later on, the adults got in a state when the buckle was discovered missing and one of Granny’s best pairs of shoes were now ruined. I pointed out where I had put the buckle, but it was now nowhere to be found. The second buckle was slipped off the other shoe and both shoes matched again, no one outside the household was any the wiser until you read this.

    Like the missing buckle we can often no longer return, but we can adapt and move forward by shedding extraneous items that hold us back.

    Beyond bingo, 32 in Chinese sounds similar to easy growth, which is considered lucky across business, relationships and in one’s personal life. It also corresponds to perseverance or staying the course in the I Ching.

    This month’s soundtrack to the newsletter is collated by The Found Sound Orchestra over on SoundCloud. Now that’s sorted, let’s get into it.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. 

    SO

    Things I’ve written.

    Reflecting on the different archetypes of people that you meet in an advertising agency new business pitch and how to deal with them.

    A roundup of everything from Chinese innovation to Anthropic’s disagreement with the US Department of Defense.

    ICYMI – Top five shares on LinkedIn

    1. Wellness as an experiential aspect of luxury. It has become a luxury currency in its own right for both genders according to a new report by Karla Otto.
    2. My friend Nigel Scott analysed the future of creative agencies. He thought that AI forced the agency break even point even higher, which impacts the rise of the independents.
    3. The paradox of Gucci using generative AI to market slow luxury aesthetic / lifestyle.
    4. International Women’s Day was marked by some sobering research on attitudes to gender equality in the UK. There was a generational aspect to it where younger cohorts men held more traditional views than other groups and optimism for their future prospects dropped.
    5. Meta was found liable in two court cases. One was about the role of social platforms facilitating human trafficking. The second was being found liable due to creating an ‘addictive’ platform. Critics now have a roadmap to seek damages and drive design changes.

    Books that I have read.

    The Persian by David McCloskey – this isn’t the first book that I have read by David McCloskey, but the one that I most anticipated. Espionage novels have had a revival as the global war on terror (GWoT) wound down, Ukraine, the South China Sea and Iran wound up. The timing of the book was precipitous. It came out at the end of January and events started down their path in the Persian Gulf soon after.

    The book is very cleverly written. The story told from multiple perspectives:

    • A Mossad department head and his staff
    • A prisoner held in an Iranian jail
    • An Iranian mother

    Yes you get the tension of a spy novel, but you also get the portrait of flawed human characters, acting and reacting to the terrible incidents around them. In this respect, it reminded me of what the Apple TV series Tehran tried to do. McCloskey manages to humanise his characters in a way that few authors in the genre beyond John le Carré and Mick Herron in his own way.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Japanese porcelain brand Hataman Touen graced the tables of the Imperial Royal Household. Their classical techniques became relevant of the modern world thanks to a collaboration with Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex anime.

    tachikoma

    The result was a limited edition model of the Tachikoma autonomous intelligent ‘tank’ that plays a prominent role in the show.

    https://www.tiktok.com/@argos/video/7577699305818000662?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7612101813533623830

    I am not a big fan of TikTok, but Argos have been killing it with their ‘stockroom rave‘. The nod to raving in working class culture for over half a century from the speed-fuelled Wigan Casino all-nighters to the Boiler Room sessions today. Less so now that I work in offices, but before going to college banging tunes on Sony ghetto-blaster got me through shifts in a McDonald’s, a clothing factory and a plant hire repair workshop. And doing it all with a dash of humour.

    My friend Dan Ilett‘s newsletter The Executive Summary fufils the old strategist maxim of being interesting first, being right second. Dan manages to pull both off more often than not, but he is always interesting. Sign up here.

    Chart of the month. 

    This month due to the confluence of a client project that never happened and the latest report drop by Morgan Stanley in association with LuxeConsult, I looked into the Swiss luxury watch industry.

    swiss watches

    A few interesting trends emerge:

    • Independents such as Patek Philippe and Rolex have successfully held off large luxury conglomerates LVMH and Richemont.
    • Swatch Group has become a donor of market share to the other main players.
    • The K-shaped market can be seen in the relative performance of Richemont’s brands. Vacheron Constantin and Cartier outperformed while IWC, Panerai and Jaeger-LeCoultre laboured in a tightening market.
    • The sector-wide -3% CAGR (compound annual growth rate), was driven by economics as much as smart watches. Smart watches will exert less pressure moving forwards as they were kept and worn for longer by users.

    Things I have watched. 

    I rewatched the original 1995 Ghost In The Shell animated film. I went in expecting for me to be thinking about the future of AI, instead the idea of the puppet master and his agent reminded me of the impact of social media and the influence that it impacts on consumers. There is one scene where a dust bin wagon driver is being questioned and is told that all his memories are false, he had been taken in by a false life. It spoke to the way people become ‘red pilled’.

    Useful tools.

    If like me, you have found that no matter what you do with your brightness button, your Mac’s screen is lacking, fear not Vivid is here. You don’t have to splurge on an XDR display to make it pop and keep the colour balance, Vivid is an app that doubles the brightness your display can achieve.  

    I am a long time fan of RSS reader Newsblur. The apps for it have recently undergone a major redesign including new features to make it even more intelligent and useful. In particular, I am really excited about a new feature that turns any website into an RSS feed that can be followed which the call Webfeeds.

    We can have a larger debate about how web developers, designers and site owners have taken a backward step by not using RSS or Atom. WordPress comes with RSS built in, so you have to actively shut it down. Instead, Instead I’d like to celebrate the major level engineering that Samuel Clay and the team at Newsblur managed to achieve in developing Webfeeds as a highly usable feature within Newblur.

    YouTube Search Fixer is a browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox that allows you to customise search results on YouTube. Doing research and don’t want to get music videos, or avoid related searches clutter – then you don’t have to.

    The sales pitch.

    I am a strategist who thrives on the “meaty brief”—the kind where deep-tech or complexity, business goals, and human culture collide.

    With over a decade of experience across the UK, EMEA, and JAPAC, I specialise in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and creative execution. I was embedded within Google Cloud’s brand creative team, where I helped navigate the “messy steps” of global pivots and the rapid rise of Gen AI. And have recently been helping out agencies and startups in various sectors.

    My approach is simple: I use insight and analytics to find the “surprise” in the strategy. Whether it’s architecting an experiential event or defining a social narrative for a SaaS powerhouse, I focus on making complex brands feel human and high-velocity businesses feel accessible.

    The Strategic Toolkit:

    • Brand & Creative Strategy: From B2B infrastructure to luxury travel.
    • AI-Enhanced Planning: Deeply literate in Google Gemini and prompt engineering to accelerate insights and creative output.
    • Multi-Sector Versatility: A proven track record across Tech & SaaS (Google Cloud, Semiconductors), Consumer Goods (FMCG, Beauty, Health), and High-Interest Categories (Luxury, Sports Apparel, Pharma).

    I am officially open for new adventures with immediate effect. If you have a challenge that needs a all-in, hit-the-ground-running strategic lead, let’s talk.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my March 2026 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the joys of spring along with chocolate eggs.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful as this helps other people and the algorithmic gods of Google Search and the various LLMs that are blurring what web search means nowadays.

    Get in touch and if you find it of use, this is now appearing on Substack as well as LinkedIn.

  • Anthropic + more things

    Anthropic and the US Department of Defense defined the debate about AI for the start of March. Trying to understand the truth is murky.

    FORTUNE Brainstorm Tech 2023

    The media pitches a clash of personalities between Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

    Anthropic’s Claude LLMs have a number of points of expertise from helping programmers develop software code more quickly to assisted decision making and automation.

    Anthropic had concerns about weapons with no humans in the loop, but you could consider ‘fire-and-forget’ weapons are already the same thing. This would include the FGM-148 ‘St’ Javelin anti-tank missile successfully used by the Ukrainians or the British Brimstone air-to-ground missile.

    Fire-and-forget saves lives, autonomous vehicles in areas like casualty evacuation and supply runs could save more lives. The Anthropic breakdown seems to be down to trust. Anthropic felt that its models weren’t ready for full autonomy of operation and there were also concerns about facilitating mass surveillance of Americans.

    There seems to be undertones of taking action against a ‘woke’ company. Why Anthropic seemed to have been able to double down is the limited impact they claim it will have on their business.

    And yes the term ‘seem’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting due to difficulty in discerning what is going on.

    China

    China: Quieter, more fretful than I remember – by Whipling – it’s immediately obvious there is a current vibe in China. It isn’t frantic. It isn’t charged. It appears to be a collective sigh. Pride at what’s been achieved; acknowledgement that things are going to stop improving at the speed they forever have; resignation that life will be a little bit harder hereon in; and gratitude that there are messier places around the world to live. Many terms have been thrown at interpreting elements of this current behaviour in China. “Involution”. “Lie Flat”. I’ll add another: “Eh, fine.”

    Why Everyone Is Suddenly in a ‘Very Chinese Time’ in Their Lives | WIRED – As is often the case with Western narratives about China, these memes are not really meant to paint an accurate picture of life in the country. Instead, they function as a projection of “all of the undesirable aspects of American life—or the decay of the American dream,” says Tianyu Fang, a PhD researcher at Harvard who studies science and technology in China.

    At a moment when America’s infrastructure is crumbling and once-unthinkable forms of state violence are being normalized, China is starting to look pretty good in contrast. “When people say it’s the Chinese century, part of that is this ironic defeat,” says Fang.

    As the Trump administration remade the US government in its own image and smashed long-standing democratic norms, people started yearning for an alternative role model, and they found a pretty good one in China. With its awe-inspiring skylines and abundant high-speed trains, the country serves as a symbol of the earnest and urgent desire among many Americans for something completely different from their own realities.

    ‘Hermès orange’ iPhone sparks Apple comeback in China | FT

    Alibaba’s Qwen App Commits ￥30B to Chinese New Year AI Giveaway Campaign | Pandaily – China’s tech giants are using the Lunar New Year — the world’s largest annual migration — to turn niche AI assistants into household names. They are betting billions that “Red Packet” marketing can do for AI what it did for mobile payments a decade ago.

    Former Alibaba Executives Join Robot Leasing Platform BotShare as President and CSO – Pandaily – Li Liheng, former head instructor of Alibaba’s renowned B2B sales force known as the “China Supplier Iron Army,” has joined robot leasing platform BotShare as President. He will be joined by Wang Mingfeng (Tianxiang)—another Alibaba veteran previously responsible for management training under Alibaba’s “Three Axes” leadership framework—who will serve as Chief Strategy Officer.

    BotShare officially launched in December 2025 and disclosed its seed funding round on January 15, 2026. The round was led by Hillhouse Ventures, with participation from Fosun Capital and other investors. According to Qichacha data, Agibot (Zhiyuan Robotics) holds a 55% stake in BotShare, while Feikuo Technology owns 15%. Founded in 2024, Feikuo focuses on deploying and operating robots in real-world scenarios such as cultural tourism, commercial performances, and guided exhibitions.

    As a robot leasing platform, BotShare aggregates robots from multiple brands and models, offering rentals for scenarios including corporate annual meetings, livestreaming, store openings, and promotional events.

    Available brands currently include Accelerated Evolution, Unitree, Zhiyuan, Zhongqing, Lingchu Intelligence, and Zhujie Dynamics, among others. Robot delivery, retrieval, and maintenance are handled by local leasing partners across different regions.

    Platform data shows that within three weeks of launch, BotShare surpassed 200,000 registered users, with daily rental orders stabilizing at over 200.

    Consumer behaviour

    One Third of Consumers Resist AI on Their Devices | Circana

    Culture

    AESTHETIC SYSTEM #2: TECHNO SURREALISM

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong’s Sogo mall operator seeks $1 billion loan refinancing | Jing Daily – Sogo malls, especially the flagship Causeway Bay one, have long been among Hong Kong’s prime retail destinations. However, traditional retailers like department stores have been facing even more pressure from the mainland’s growing e-commerce penetration, the rise of low-end stores and weak domestic consumer sentiment.

    Lifestyle International was taken private by its chairman, Hong Kong billionaire businessman Thomas Lau Luen-Hung, in a HK$1.9 billion deal after the company warned of an at least 80% plunge in profit in the first half of 2022.

    Still, Hong Kong’s retail landscape has shown signs of stabilizing. Government data indicates that retail sales rose 6.5% year-on-year in November 2025, citing improving local consumption amid sustained economic growth and increasing visitor numbers.

    From Rolex to Naoya Hida: East Asia’s role in the secondhand watch boom | Jing Daily – Hong Kong leads, Taiwan sustains, Southeast Asia emerges. Across the auction house’s East Asian markets, collector behavior differs sharply.

    “Hong Kong continues to drive the strongest demand in the region,” Perazzi says. As a global gateway, the city draws international bidders competing for trophy pieces — particularly Rolex and Patek Philippe — and increasingly, independents.

    Taiwan, meanwhile, reflects consistency rather than spikes. “Taiwanese collectors are renowned for their long-term approach. Compared to Hong Kong’s appetite for headline-grabbing lots, Taiwan is characterized by quieter but reliable demand,” Perazzi adds.

    A surprise force is Southeast Asia. Vietnam and the Philippines are now producing first-generation collectors with expanding wealth pools and few legacy constraints. “Southeast Asia has emerged as a dynamic growth region,” Perazzi says, citing a younger collector profile and faster adoption of new independents.

    62% of Hong Kong Zoomers fear they can’t compete with AI: Chinese YMCA survey

    Ideas

    The Singularity Is Always Near – by Kevin Kelly – KK

    Indonesia

    Indonesian woman collapses after 140 lashes for sex and alcohol | South China Morning Post – A woman in Indonesia’s Aceh province collapsed after being caned 140 times last week for extramarital sex and drinking alcohol in one of the harshest sharia punishments on record.
    The woman and her partner were struck with a rattan cane in a public park in Aceh province on Thursday as dozens watched, Agence France-Presse reported. Each received 100 lashes for extramarital sex and another 40 for consuming alcohol, according to Banda Aceh sharia police chief Muhammad Rizal.     – the move to more Gulf-orientated interpretation of Islamic rule is likely to cramp globalisation in Indonesia by western firms, despite it being the most populated Muslim country and will affect service industries such as tourism

    Innovation

    Unorthodox ‘universal vaccine’ offers broad protection in mice | Science | AAAS

    On’s Greatest Innovation Isn’t a Sneaker. It’s a Robot. | Sportsverse

    Japan

    Japan’s AI Affinity – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention

    4 Yakuza, 4 Livers, 100+ Dead Americans; No problem. The UCLA Report You’ve Never Seen | Jake Adelstein

    Luxury

    What are premium Chinese brands doing for Spring Festival 2026? 🧨 | Following the Yuan

    Luxury’s Overexposure Is Biting – Matter

    The Wait List for a Birkin or Rolex Is Getting Shorter – WSJ – Falling resale values show that even makers of the world’s most popular luxury goods are feeling a slowdown

    Marketing

    Tymbals : The Agency of the Future (Circa 2026) – Nigel Scott looks at the impact of LLMs on the creative output of agencies and Kering got it wrong using AI as a creative tool: Gucci’s AI experiment is what happens when luxury forgets it’s luxury – Intern Pierre

    Materials

    The Cell That Didn’t Catch Fire – by Howard Yu

    On’s Greatest Innovation Isn’t a Sneaker. It’s a Robot. | Sportsverse

    Media

    When Real Beauty Met Reddit | LBBOnline – Reddit is very underestimated, interesting to see Dove using it in this way. Also worthwhile noting that Reddit is a key training source for LLMs.

    WPP Media launches framework for evaluating AI advertising capabilities – The Media Leader

    Listening to “The Joe Rogan Experience” | The New Yorker – the lineage from 1960s weird fringe late night medium wave radio to the mainstream media of The Joe Rogan show

    Online

    Chinese internet reacts to Bad Bunny – by Beimeng Fu

    Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic

    America must follow China in treating data as an asset – In 2024, China became the first country to allow enterprises to classify data as intangible assets on their balance sheets. Beijing had already declared data a “factor of production” alongside land, labour, capital and technology. The National Data Administration now oversees dozens of data exchanges. China Unicom, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, reported Rmb204mn ($29mn) in assets in its first filing under the new rules.

    Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell – CIA

    Security

    Russia targets Telegram as rift with founder Pavel Durov deepens | FT

    ‘Honeypots’ and influence operations: China’s spies turn to Europe | FT

    Pentagon is embracing Musk’s Grok AI chatbot as it draws global outcry | C4ISRnet

    Taiwan’s Tron Future unveils AI-guided anti-armor rockets | C4ISRnet

    AI-powered military neurotech: Mind enhancement or control? | C4ISRnet

    The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them | The Verge

    Economic Espionage and Innovation Restrictions by Andrew Kao & Karthik Tadepalli (University of California, Berkleley, Harvard University)

    Flickr moves to contain data exposure, warns users of phishing | Security Affairs

    PRC Targets NATO Frontline States | RealClearDefense

    iPhone and iPad are the first consumer devices cleared for NATO ’s ‘RESTRICTED’ classification | SecurityAffairs

    Technology

    Apple Does Fusion. – On my Om – the architecture move is more interesting than the products.

    iPhone and iPad are the first consumer devices cleared for NATO ’s ‘RESTRICTED’ classification | SecurityAffairs

    Most of the major AI players went to Davos, though they weren’t the main focus due to the Trump administration. Google Deepmind founder Demis Hassabis admitted that the current AI market is ‘bubble-like’.

    Beyond the Bubble: Why AI Infrastructure Will Compound Long after the Hype | KKR

    Does China care about AGI? – by Kyle Chan – High Capacity

    Yahoo Japan and LINE to build combined private cloud • The Register – Japan’s take on sovereign cloud

    TMTB: Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) at MS TMT Key Quotes & Dario’s Choice and Anthropic’s Future | Big Technology

    Web-of-no-web

    Chinese robotaxis beat U.S. rivals to the Gulf – Rest of World

    Wireless

    Orbital geopolitics: China’s dual-use space internet MERICS

  • The nine people you meet in a pitch

    The nine people you meet in a pitch came out of talking with a couple of former colleagues about recent pitches that they’d been involved in. I was thinking about how I had experienced what it was like to pitch and to be pitched to as a client.

    The tour guide's sales pitch

    Based on all that, I thought I would share some experience and expertise that might be of help.

    The nine people you are likely pitching to.

    You can think of the panelists receiving your pitch as fitting into nine behaviour archetypes.

    • The advocate
    • The complainer
    • The detail lover
    • The late comer
    • The multi-tasker
    • The narcissist
    • The skeptic
    • The spectator
    • The surpriser

    Right let’s get into this and meet the nine people.

    The advocate

    The advocate may be apparent before you are in the room for the pitch. They may have worked with the agency before and have likely advocated for the agency to be on the list. A good pitch lead with enough time will have primed the advocate with the thinking and themes that they would be sharing in the pitch.

    Or not, some people are just very agreeable in nature.

    How you’ll recognise them

    They will seem receptive and positive to everything. Pitch teams and process tends to overlook the advocate in the pitch. But they can be used to the pitch team’s advantage.

    The complainer

    The complainer may be an advocate of the existing agency, may be having their budget cut to pay for the activity that the new agency will do, or may have been left out of the early process that started the agency search.

    How you’ll recognise them

    Negative towards everything, can be mistaken for the skeptic or the surpriser.

    The detail lover

    These people usually fit into one of three categories:

    • They are currently really in the trenches and want to ensure that you can really make their lives easier
    • They are product people who are domain experts on their area: use cases, technical details and probably less likely users
    • In a highly regulated sector they could have a legal or regulatory responsibility, in pharma companies they may be called MLR (medical, legal and regulatory)

    How you’ll recognise them

    Prior the pitch these people are most likely to push an agency to put much more detail in their decks so they become lengthy and take a lot of time to create. All the while the storytelling red thread goes missing.

    In the pitch, given the volume of questioning you may mistake them for the surpriser or the narcissist. The key differences being that the narcissist won’t usually give you an opportunity to answer and the surpriser will bring completely new areas of questioning in.

    The late comer

    They turn up the meetings late. This could be personal factors such as workload and time management, or it could be an attention diverting tactic.

    How you’ll recognise them

    They turn up late, its more important to identify why they turn up late as you could actually be dealing with the narcissist, the skeptic or the surpriser.

    The multi-tasker

    This usually comes down to company culture usually rather than a character trait.

    How to recognise them

    If it’s company culture you will be likely dealing with a sea of laptop lids, or smartphone being used on the desk. Assume that they are listening, although they might be commenting and norming in real time on your presentation in a conversation thread on Google Workspace, Teams, WhatsApp etc.

    If it’s one person then it might be the sign of distraction (child minder gets in touch saying their child is running a temperature or similar). Or it could be a sign of dissonance, keep an eye out for the complainer or the skeptic

    The skeptic

    They may have similar world view to the complainer in that they would prefer the status quo. Though they may view the status quo as the least worst option rather than be an advocate for it.

    They may be:

    • Risk averse by nature
    • This may be completely new to them
    • They may have been part of a project that has gone wrong in the past

    How you’ll recognise them

    This could be tricky as they may look similar to the spectator or the surpriser. Generally statements and related questions made will seek proofs as part of the response.

    The surpriser

    The surpriser usually is a symptom of a client that doesn’t have internal alignment on their brief.

    How you’ll recognise them

    They will come in with new information, ideas and questions that may disrupt the meeting agenda and possibly the whole pitch process.

    How to deal with them as you encounter the nine people?

    General rules to work with

    Which ever of the nine people you are engaging with it’s good to remember for your own sanity that it’s generally not personal so don’t take it that way. All of the nine people archetypes are under some sort of pressure / stress. At most, you’re a non-player character in the video game that they call life.

    Given what I said about their likely personal stressors, try and empathise with what might be the root causes of their behaviour. You’ve experienced agency life and the way it can clobber you – you get similarly interesting times in most corporate environments.

    Hanlon’s razor says something to the effect of “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” You can swap out stupidity for ignorance, thoughtlessness etc. but the message remains equally valid. I know it’s tough to be empathetic in the stressful environment of a pitch but try. Engage in a positive way.

    If you are pitching an international team or a large company there is likely to be cultural differences. In my experiences large companies like Alphabet and Microsoft have their own language and world view just in the same way as the agency world has its own jargon.

    If you are pitching in another country there is another layer of cultural differences. Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map is a great primer for different country cultures. Be mindful of cultural differences and sensitivities.

    When you are making claims, assumptions or answering a question provide relevant proof where appropriate.

    However tempting it is, never get into confrontation with any of the nine people archetypes. You won’t win and you may cause friction with your colleagues that would outlive the pitch. There’s a fine line between being clever and a ̶d̶i̶c̶k̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ misanthrope.

    Specific tactics for each of the nine people portrayed.

    The advocate

    • Get them to share their feedback.
    • If you can arrange it prior to the pitch, give them a role in the meeting.
    • As a watch out they are easy to ignore because you often focused on solving for other behaviours.

    The complainer

    • Make them feel heard, for instance ask them about what is important in an agency partner.
    • Be prepared to move on, don’t get hung up on their questions.
    • Share evidence that would reassure the complainer such as case studies demonstrating competence, experience and expertise.

    The detail lover

    • Emphasise the limited time to present and ask how the additional information will aid the decision-making process.
    • Co-opt other attendees in the room by asking them who would also find the additional information valuable to included.

    The late comer

    Prior to going into the pitch, have a plan on how you will handle a delay on the pitch. Having this pre-planned will make you feel far more settled if you need to use it.

    In the pitch:

    • For the beginning of the presentation, see if you can cover the less important details first, so that late comers don’t miss out on the important items.
    • Offer to bring the late comer up to speed.

    The multi-tasker

    Dealing with the multi-tasker is down to going into the pitch with a high degree of engagement designed in that makes multi-tasking behaviour difficult to do. You need to outcompete other calls on their attention.

    The narcissist

    • Acknowledge their input, but ask for input from others. This shifts the focus away from them and puts their input in a broader context.
    • Once you know who they are, reduce their impact on the meeting by looking for other people’s input first.
    • Make them feel that their input is valued by ensuring they know that you have captured their input.

    The skeptic

    • Enquire about what causes them the greatest challenge.
    • Ask them about what good looks like from their perspective. What would help address their greatest challenge?
    • Reassure by sharing case studies, expertise and experience where similar challenges have been successfully addressed.

    The spectator

    • You need to strike a balance between engaging them to ensure that they are heard, but not putting them on the spot. Everyone’s input is crucial. Acknowledge the value of their contribution.

    The surpriser

    • Acknowledge their input, not doing so would quickly turn them to a complainer.
    • You need to make a judgement based on the situation in the room, if it makes sense to include their new input based on agreed goals. This will likely require one-or-more follow-up meeting.