2 minutes estimated reading time
Chinese beauty calendars
How China’s Beauty Calendars Defined an Era’s Aesthetics | SixthTone – the history of China’s beauty calendars is the history of China opening up and closing back down again. The beauty calendars aren’t high art or pornography like the Perelli calendar of old. But for the time, they were at the bleeding edge of changing social norms after Mau. The calendars declined when the Xi administration stopped state owned enterprises giving or receiving calendars.
Business
‘Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism’: a book by Angela Zhang | Chillin’Competition – fascinating read on Chinese corporates the Chinese antitrust system
Consumer behaviour
Children Beating Up Robot Inspires New Escape Maneuver System – IEEE Spectrum – children are monsters at times. Really interesting article
Legal
Former Tencent employee ordered to pay US$167,000 for breaching non-compete pact after joining TikTok owner ByteDance | South China Morning Post – shocking. I hope ByteDance are picking up the tab for him. I am surprised that he lost, generally these contracts are hard to enforce. Secondly, the case wasn’t in Shenzhen where Tencent would win because that’s where their headquarters are, but in Beijing. Finally, the damages were surprisingly high
Luxury
Queen of the Night: One-of-a-Kind Porsche Taycan 4S Artcar by Richard Phillips Blossoms in Switzerland | Automobiles | RM Sotheby’s – Sotherby’s sees this as a direct line descendant of Janis Joplin’s painted Porsche 356; but given that this a brand art collaboration I see it more as a copy of the BMW Art Car project
Why Gold Watches Are Increasing in Value and Demand – Robb Report – more of a opinion piece on why gold watches are have never had a better change of success than now due to increased market share
Information security
The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook’s End-to-End Encryption | WIRED – THE UK IS planning a new attack on end-to-end encryption, with the Home Office set to spearhead efforts designed to discourage Facebook from further rolling out the technology to its messaging apps. – Unsurprisingly Patel is using child molestors as its excuse. No words about how metadata and good police work can get around the limitations of encryption. When you take this in account with the new police bill going through parliament, it all looks exceptionally authoritarian in nature
Suspected Chinese spies cover tracks in efforts to breach Vietnamese government | CyberScoop – more security related content here.
UK
Elite wars – The Ruffian – I understand why campaigners and commentators are upset by Sewell’s tone and by the over-managed press launch. But loudly complaining about this kind of thing while refusing to engage constructively with the arguments of the report seems irresponsibly trivial. After all, what’s at stake here is far more important than a dispute between elites over tone, terminology and media management. Everyone is in agreement that racism is a serious problem in Britain. Shouldn’t we focus our disagreements on what to do about it? – well worth reading the whole article and the reports that it links to. The Conversation covered most of the opposing views high points here: Race commission report: the rights and wrongs | The Conversation