Worrying debt + more things

2 minutes estimated reading time

WSJ City | Young Chinese Spending Creates Worrying Debt – looks like a credit bubble waiting to happen. Worrying debt in terms of personal credit doesn’t create economic value in the same way that government debt on infrastructure does. Chinese corporates also have worrying debt also has shades of bubble era Japan about it. Since consumer spending is driving China’s 6 percent growth, what would happen if the credit bubble burst?

Farewell to Those Days of Wrestling With Fate
Busy Chinese city life

A European Perspective on Boeing’s 737 MAX Debacle: An “Existential Crisis” for a National Champion | naked capitalism – Boeing’s Crashes Expose Systemic Failings – fascinating Spiegel article of which this pulls out the highlights

BangBros Acquires, Shuts Down PornWikiLeaks Site | AVN – this is about trying to stem the flood of doxxing that has beset performers in the adult entertainment industry and their families

Big Brands ‘Acting Like Startups’​ – A Potential Red Flag | LinkedIn – one for companies in FMCG space like Unilever to read. It points out the flaws in ‘disruption porn’ pedalled by McKinsey Digital and Accenture

WSJ City | Trans-Pacific Tensions Threaten US Data Link to China – also likely to affect Hong Kong as a financial centre and base for cloud network hosting

YouTube to adjust UK algorithm to cut false and extremist content | Technology | The Guardian – censorship. Interesting that there will be concern about China yet we’ve stepped on a slippery slope

Big brands turn to big data to rekindle growth | Financial Times – this makes me worry about the internal future state of research in large consumer companies

bellingcat – Amazon’s Online Bezos Brigade Unleashed On Twitter – If you’ve worked on Amazon social you might want to take it off your CV after reading this…

Nicolas Roope: “A different design language is taking over”The challenge is how brands can adapt their propositions. Architecture demonstrates the formality of this new direction: what is now a series of gestures and actions that may or may not be involved in the surface will be critical to the success of the project. How do these buildings respond to the urgent requirements of energy use reduction and waste reduction? How do they perform as stories in hyperconnected environments where reputations are established in social media? Think Instagrammable hotel rooms…

The Economist | China’s thin-skinned nationalists want to be loved and fearedZoe hit the jackpot. Over a million netizens responded to her poll, posted on Weibo, the country’s largest microblog platform, asking what followers think of foreign brands that “insult China”. Her timing was impeccable. Her survey surfed waves of patriotic indignation crashing over the Chinese internet, heightened by puffs of windy outrage in the state media. To give you an idea of how ridiculous it can sometimes be:

Big Blue Open Sources Power Chip Instruction Set – a really interesting opportunity opens up for a fully open source rival to ARM

Member Research: Away vs. Rimowa – 2PM – I’ve been a long time RIMOWA fan, but the pilot case I like has been discontinued

Mediatel: Newsline: Millennials finally get to neg someone else – gen-z seen as workshy egotists by gen-y

Beyond Techno-Orientalism: An Interview with Logic Magazine’s Xiaowei R Wang