Month: September 2020
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Tech cold war + more things
The US-China tech cold war has turned hot – but would a Biden presidency change things for Huawei and others? | South China Morning Post – “No president will want to be accused of being soft on China,” said James Andrew Lewis, senior vice-president and director of the technology policy programme at the Washington-based Centre…
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Carhartt Labor Day + more things
Carhartt Labor Day colouring book – the American workwear brand put together a great children’s colouring book for labor day weekend. It allows parents to explain what they do for their kids and provides an activity for a socially isolated public holiday. You can download your Carhartt Labor Day colouring book here. Vox Media have…
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Dark stores and coercive diplomacy
I came across a couple of interesting terms recently: dark stores and coercive diplomacy. Dark stores Gartner for Marketing (formerly L2 Inc.) were talking about a new development at Amazon’s Whole Foods subsidiary. It was what Gartner called digital dark stores. The first one has been established in Industry City to serve much of Brooklyn,…
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Boris Johnson + more things
The Irreparable Damage Boris Johnson Is Wreaking on Britain – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – unlike many members of his party, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson does not have any particular animus toward foreigners. He has betrayed pretty well everyone in his various lives as philanderer, journalist, and politician: wives, mistresses, editors, readers, party…
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Gaming the charts
Gaming the charts has been going on for decades. Economist Tyler Cowen documented how prosecutions in the US for what was called payola started in the 1950s in his book: In Praise of Commercial Culture. Prior to this the process for ranking and gaming the charts was opaque at best. It destroyed the career of…
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Chinese State Security + more things
When Chinese State Security police knocked on ABC journalist Bill Birtles’ door, he realised he was no longer safe in China – ABC News – interesting how business and finance reporting has been hard for the past few years. Which is one of the reasons why scandals like Luckin Coffee happen. Chinese state security is…
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Orchestrated media
I decided to revisit the idea of orchestrated media recently. I had been working on the SEO of a post from 2011. This post linked out to an article by BBC research and development on orchestrated media. The BBC where aware that media consumption had become more complicated. Attention whilst watching the TV at one…
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Things that caught my eye this week
The Lebanese armed forces were celebrating their 75th birthday and wanted to celebrate the contribution that they make to society. So they worked with a marketing agency to come up with PEACECAMO. PEACECAMO is based on photographs taken of different humanitarian incidents over the years that were then rendered into camouflage. These uniforms will be…
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Full spectrum information ops + more
Internet Observatory – New White Paper on China’s Full Spectrum Information Operations – China’s influence strategy on COVID-19 has involved a full spectrum of overt and covert tactics, which has included domestic censorship, English-language state media messaging bolstered by Facebook ads, and the use of fake accounts to influence conversations on Western social media platforms.…