Finance is a really odd section for me to have. I don’t come from a finance background, I have no interest in fin-tech. Yet it makes its appearance here on this blog.
When thinking about this category, I decided to reflect on why its here. It’s usually where curated content sits, rather than my own ideas.
The reality of life in the west is that everything has become financialised. As I write this as people think about web 3.0, they are thinking about payment systems first and working about utility later. This implies that the open web we know won’t be part of the metaverse in terms of ideas or ethos.
Instead of economic growth consumer spending depends on different ways of creating credit. Its no accident that delayed payments finance company Klarna is the biggest thing in European e-commerce at the time of writing this page.
Back when I started writing we were heading into the financial crisis of 2008, the knock on effects of that could still be felt a dozen years later and was a contributing factor to Brexit and Trump victories. The ‘occupy’ movement was catalysed by the financial crisis and then turned into something else. For instance it became a pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
We had the implosion of financial brands like Lehman Brothers and the Royal Bank of Scotland. This created a lack of trust in business, the media and the government. We are still seeing that play out today, from cryptocurrency to conspiracy theories and a lack of trust by the public in experts.
The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declaration of a zeitenwende or epochal tectonic shift following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of this tectonic shift is Germany’s desire to become a security guarantor in Europe. A lot of coverage has focused on how far away Germany is from this aspiration in terms of military preparedness and over-reliance on the very countries likely to threaten European security.
In an opinion piece Chancellor Scholz asked a rhetorical question
How can we, as Europeans and as the European Union, remain independent actors in an increasingly multipolar world?
Scholz implies that the tectonic shift also adversely affects the United States efforts to jumpstart green industries and contain a globally more aggressive China. One could argue that Scholz’s approach is business as usual. For decades, large German enterprises have encouraged the government to work with authoritarian regimes, creating a Germany highly dependent on bad actors.
Indonesia set to penalise sex outside marriage in overhaul of criminal code | Reuters – the new code could be passed by as early as next week. The code, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike, with business groups expressing concern about what damage the rules might have on Indonesia’s image as a holiday and investment destination. – the question is if this is going to take Indonesia on a similar path of economic stagnation as Malaysia has taken?
Twitter’s decline continues. I noticed this morning that Twitter allowed me to post the exact same Twitter post twice. That isn’t something that was possible previously and I could see how it could be used for nefarious reasons.
My twitter account this afternoon when I checked it
Shein Confusion: The Fast-Fashion Giant’s New Resale Site Doesn’t Make Buying Easy — The Information – Annie tries out Shein Exchange, the e-commerce brand’s foray into the bustling resale market. On its face, the platform seems like a good idea, given the ongoing controversies over Shein’s cheap, disposable, landfill-clogging apparel. But there is something distinctly off about the brand’s effort to sell used clothes
Amazon’s new AI tool may take over work from employees facing layoffs and buyouts – Vox – the tech giant has been working for at least the last year to hand over some of its recruiters’ tasks to an AI technology that aims to predict which job applicants across certain corporate and warehouse jobs will be successful in a given role and fast-track them to an interview — without a human recruiter’s involvement. The technology works in part by finding similarities between the resumes of current, well-performing Amazon employees and those of job applicants applying for similar jobs
The US Army’s Land Warrior programme was in development for some 33 years. The idea behind it is that better informed soldiers who are connected to support assets can do more with less and survive.
Chris Capelluto put together a good accessible history of the programme.
Burning chrome
About a decade after the rise of cyberpunk developed as a literature genre, the defence thinkers realised the potential of modern technologies that would have sounded similar to Case’s cyber deck in Neuromancer.
Head up displays, small but connected and powerful networked computers and connected weapon sights of the Land Warrior programme have taken over three decades to fulfil the original vision. Technology takes time, while Land Warrior has taken three plus decades; artificial intelligence is taking a lot longer again.
Human factors
Even now the Land Warrior programme isn’t completely sorted. The Microsoft Halolens AR displays are said to cause debilitating nausea, headaches and eye strain. More than 80% of those who experienced discomfort suffered symptoms within three hours of using the Land Warrior AR headset.
The wearable computer of the Land Warrior programme is an Android powered Smartphone sized device, but would be using very different networks. The network is both the strength and the point of weakness in the Land Warrior programme.
How the networked structures of Land Warrior will fully affect military culture and power structures will be interesting. All of it will be creating tensions in the millennia of ‘hard-wiring’ humans have had since before the dawn of civilisation as we know it and the impact will be much deeper than just the physical tiredness from head up display googles.
Just think about the benefits and ills of social media, or how the world has shrunk through video calls. In my parent’s lifetime, people leaving their homes in Ireland to emigrate to the US or Australia used to have a wake at their leaving. In some respects that departure was a form of death. That is very different to the relationship that I have with family and friends around the world now. Changes coming through from Land Warrior might be equally deep over time.
A lament for the age of apathy | Financial Times – Turnout in the US election of 1996 fell below 50 per cent. In Britain five years later, it was the lowest since the Great war. Most pop culture either side of the millennium wasn’t even allusively or allegorically political. You can read Jane Austen — goes the old line — without knowing that Napoleon was cutting through Europe. You can watch Friends without knowing that America has a government. The peak of the apolitical age was Big Brother, which, in sealing contestants from the news, didn’t disrupt their lives much. – I think a large amount of society still live in that bubble
I was watching this video and I could it imagine something similar being done to describe the luck of many market towns in the west of Ireland with the identikit feel
The video below is a good run down on the short term aspects of the current state of the UK economy. However UK productivity has been going wrong for decades. Several reasons:
The UK relies on services rather than manufacturing – While the UK was in the EU, those factories that remained imported more productive workers from the east. With Brexit the manufacturing and warehouses went east instead along with income tax revenues
The UK has a serious skills gap, there isn’t the prevalence of night colleges any more
The UK has been declining in automation. The classic example is trying to find an automatic car wash. During the 1970s and 1980s these were all over the UK. Now you get a bunch of people with buckets. UK warehouses are much less automated than most other places. This is partly down to several decades of short termism that Will Hutton wrote about back in The State We’re In circa 1995
Brexit has permanently re-eingineered supply chains around the UK
Too much UK investment has gone into real estate, you only have to see all the developments in London and Manchester
Universities are now developed for the benefit of foriegn students rather than domestic talent growth, innovation. And the universities are over leveraged in property development and are likely to go under if there is a reduction in foreign students or a rise in interest rates
Epson to End All Laser Printer Sales by 2026 – ExtremeTech – quietly chosen to stop selling laser printer hardware by 2026. The company will instead focus on its more environmentally-friendly inkjet printers, according to a statement obtained by The Register. Although the company stopped selling laser printers in the United States a while back, it had maintained the line in other markets, including Europe and Asia. Consumers will no longer be able to purchase new Epson laser printers as of 2026, but Epson has promised to continue supporting existing customers via supplies and spare parts. Epson itself claims its inkjets are up to 85 percent more energy efficient than its laser units and produce 85 percent less carbon dioxide. Interesting move, western companies would be virtue signalling the hell out of this.
Really impressive piece of technology and engineering by Sony. But I can’t work out why it was done. By this time Citizen, Casio and Sony were already making LCD televisions. Back in the day Sony used to some products, just because the engineers could. I also love how this looks like a miniature version of a Sony 14″ portable TV circa 1984, even down to the homage to the Trinitron branding.
There seems to be a lack of appreciation for economic trajectory that Hong Kong is on; inextricably linked in China
They don’t seem to understand the political trajectory Hong Kong is on
They aren’t the kind of talent that Hong Kong needs to plug losses in healthcare, education, social services and the creative industries
More developed countries aren’t likely to want ‘stepping stone’ Chinese people from Hong Kong. Their choices might be as limited as are on the mainland
This will only accelerate simmering nativist hostility and more Hong Kongers may leave via BNO visas etc.
If Hong Kong has been in a recession, what must the real state of the China economy be? Are they way worse than PMI and official numbers seem to suggest?
Finally, China has disliked Hong Kong being a vehicle for capital flight. With a greying workforce and declining birth rate will they dislike the talent flight of middle class Chinese through ‘stepping stone’ Hong Kong?
Ideas
Interesting viewpoint on Russia from author Ian Garner. You can find out more about his book here.
China’s puffer jacket obsession: Its not just Moncler and Canada Goose, homegrown brands are taking off | Campaign Asia – Domestic Chinese and international puffer jacket brands are battling for market share in the mainland. We take a look at which names are emerging victorious. China’s puffer jacket obsession: Its not just Moncler and Canada Goose, homegrown brands are taking offWhen temperatures in China started to cool down in early October, one of the biggest fashion trends to return was the puffer jacket. Alongside higher-priced brands like Canada Goose — which saw 20 percent higher sales compared to the previous year — homegrown puffer jacket labels such as Bosideng, Xue Zhong Fei, and Yaya all reported that their gross merchandise value (GMV) growth rate on Tmall exceeded 100 percent. Meanwhile, European brand Moncler sold out of its classic Maya coat on the first day of its debut on Tmall Luxury Pavilion in October.
Media
Why Hong Kong’s outdoor advertising is underperforming | Media | Campaign Asia – Based on a recent study by Hong Kong Baptist University, OOH ads are failing to capture people as they severely lack creativity. Dang, I feel bad for you son, that’s burn to the Hong Kong agency scene right there. Seriously though I would be curious about the methodology
The $300 Million Sneaker King Comes Undone – WSJ – In May, Mr. Malekzadeh’s fiancée—also the company’s finance chief—pushed for both of them to come clean, according to people familiar with the situation. Federal prosecutors a few months later charged the couple with bank fraud and Mr. Malekzadeh with wire fraud and money laundering. Customers claim they paid millions of dollars for shoes that never arrived. A court-appointed receiver is sorting out the remaining inventory of the entrepreneur’s company, Zadeh Kicks. Early last year, Mr. Malekzadeh collected orders for about 600,000 pairs of Air Jordan 11 Cool Grey sneakers months before they hit stores, netting over $70 million, according to prosecutors. He priced the sneakers between $115 and $200 a pair, cheaper than their expected retail price of around $225
OOPS is Meta’s online operations support system. OOPS provides access to user accounts like a sys admin on a company IT network. If you’re a Meta employee, friends or family you can get hold of a concierge service to solve account related problems. It isn’t available to outsiders.
It seems that OOPS has been used to reassign or disable accounts for profit and access wasn’t as controlled as it should be.
The Meta OOPS scandal made me wonder if OnlyFans performer Kitty Lixo had actually been gaslit about her account by Meta employees, rather than being helped out in return for sex. Lixo has gone from having an Instagram account with 199,000 followers to two smaller accounts with under 20,000 followers combined at the time of writing.
“We met up and I f**ked a couple of them and I was able to get my account back two-three times,” Kitty Lixo said, recommending others with locked accounts to continue reaching out to the platform for eventual ban reversal.
OnlyFans Star Says She Slept With Meta Employees to Get Instagram Unbanned by Nick Mordowanec (May 20, 2022) Newsweek
Subscription Pricing Coming to Features Your Car Already Has – a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off? …As vehicles become increasingly connected to the internet, car companies aim to rake in billions by having customers pay monthly or annual subscriptions to access certain features. Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. For automakers, the advantage of this model is clear. …Not only do they get a stream of recurring revenue for years after an initial purchase, they can hope to maintain a longer-term relationship with the customer and build brand loyalty, said Kristin Kolodge, vice president and head of auto benchmarking and mobility development at J.D. Power. – I suspect that this will only work if every car was on a lease agreement and if that’s the case then there are lots of negative impact from old cars that need to be written off that outweigh this business model. Secondly, there is an expectation that all of the vehicle will conform to Moore’s Law.
What about the layoffs at Meta and Twitter? Elon is crazy! WTF??? | I, Cringely – I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1977 — 45 years ago. I was 24 years old and had accepted a Stanford fellowship paying $2,575 for the academic year. My on-campus apartment rent was $175 per month and a year later I’d buy my first Palo Alto house for $57,000 (sold 21 years later for $990,000). It was an exciting time to be living and working in Silicon Valley. And it still is. We’re right now in a period of economic confusion and reflection when many of the loudest voices have little to no sense of history. Well my old brain is crammed with history and I’m here to tell you that the current situation — despite the news coverage — is no big deal. This, too, shall pass – vintage Bob Cringely
Kiwix on the App Store – this is available on Mac and iOS app stories. It allows you to view an offline version of Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg and Khan Academy modules. Ideal for when you’re unplugged.
What happens to the unionist community identity with it being so bound up to being part of the UK and their otherness to the local Irish population?
Would Northern Ireland Unionism see the UK as having spurned them and what would the blowback be? The honest answer would be which branches of unionism?
The various strands of unionism
Unionism means different things to different people. Below are three very broad brush stroke portraits of unionist groupings.
The staunch religious unionists who may be regular attendees at the likes of the Free Presbyterian church who believe that their rights are divine and would view papists in the same category as satanists and pedophiles. Even worse are people with secular beliefs in things like gay marriage or abortion on demand.
The working class unionists who might not be regular church attendees but hatred is tradition, the Troubles were only one generation away and in a time of globalisation, any advantage is needed. In many respects the more active members of this community look and sound similar to right wing populist supporters on the mainland and elsewhere. With low education attainment, a united Ireland would have a limited upside. In previous generations these were the people that Carson fired up and volunteered to die by the thousand in the First World War.
The middle class unionist. In the past they may have voted for the Ulster Unionist Party which was a house for a wide range of unionist views from the moderate Terence O’Neill to more hardline candidates. More likely to be in the professions, a medium sized business owner, farmer and university educated. Economic considerations are more likely to have a bearing on any voting decisions.
Unionism was begat from a displaced people
The curious aspect about unionism is the origins. The people who founded the Ulster plantations, were disconnected from their King who had moved to London to rule over the whole of Great Britain. They were given land to make them feel like they were still cared about.
Later generations that were brought in were themselves displaced from land holdings in Scotland previously by landlords The eviction of tenants went against dùthchas, the principle that clan members had an inalienable right to rent land in the clan territory. Since the Middle Ages the clan has been the principle social organisation / construct. The plantations led to the founding of many of Ulster’s towns and created a lasting Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also resulted in many of the native Irish nobility losing their land and led to centuries of ethnic and sectarian animosity, which at times spilled into conflict.
The problem now for unionists is that a majority of mainlanders feel ambivalent at best towards their Ulster kinsmen and the desire for union with them is one-sided.
Toronto businessman allegedly focus of Chinese interference probes: sources | Globalnews.ca – The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has investigated Wei Chengyi for his alleged role in a covert scheme that facilitated large-fund transfers meant to advance Beijing’s interests in Canada’s 2019 federal election, sources said. According to RCMP sources, national security investigators are also probing Wei for possible links to several properties in Toronto and Vancouver allegedly used as so-called Chinese government “police stations,” which are believed to secretly host agents from China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS.)
Russia’s Road to Economic Ruin | Foreign Affairs – At the beginning of the war, in February and early March, Russians rushed to buy dollars and euros to protect themselves against a potential plunge in the ruble. Over the next eight months, with Russian losses in Ukraine mounting, they bought even more. Normally, this would have caused a significant devaluation of the ruble because when people buy foreign currency, the ruble plunges. Because of sanctions, however, companies that imported goods before the war stopped purchasing currency to finance these imports. As a result, imports fell by 40 percent in the spring. One consequence was that the ruble strengthened against the dollar. In short, it was not that sanctions did not work. On the contrary, their short-term effect on imports was unexpectedly strong. Such a fall in imports was not expected. If Russia’s central bank had anticipated such a massive fall, it would not have introduced severe restrictions on dollar deposits in March to prevent a collapse in the value of the ruble. Economic sanctions did, of course, have other immediate effects. Curbing Russia’s access to microelectronics, chips, and semiconductors made production of cars and aircraft almost impossible. From March to August, Russian car manufacturing fell by an astonishing 90 percent, and the drop in aircraft production was similar. The same holds true for the production of weapons, which is understandably a top priority for the government. Expectations that new trade routes through China, Turkey, and other countries that are not part of the sanctions regime would compensate for the loss of Western imports have been proved wrong. The abnormally strong ruble is a signal that backdoor import channels are not working. If imports were flowing into Russia through hidden channels, importers would have been buying dollars, sending the ruble down. – One of the more interesting pieces of analysis on sanctions
The Center for Strategic Translation – Starting in the summer of 2023 the Center will host a series of seminars to teach young journalists, graduate students, and government analysts the tools of “Pekinology.” Led by a carefully selected set of senior scholars and retired government personnel, these seminars instruct students in the open-source analysis of Communist Party policy, introduce them to the distinctive lexicon and history of Party speak, and train them how to draw credible conclusions from conflicting or propagandistic documentary sources
Acronym Designer Errolson Hugh Sees the Future | GQ – “People often use the word ‘dystopia’ or the phrase ‘cyberpunk’ in relation to us,” Errolson says. “But really, our whole thing is, Acronym is really about agency. It’s about enabling somebody to do something they couldn’t otherwise. It’s inherently optimistic.” – Errolson Hugh and the design team at Acronym cross a number of different areas or disciplines. You could look backwards and see Hugh and Co. as materials innovators with martial influences walking in the footsteps of Massimo Osti who founded C.P. Company and Stone Island.
Errolson Hugh via Bicycle magazine Japan
There is also a clear connective thread in terms of style between Errolson Hugh’s Acronym, Yoon Ahn & Verbal (Ryu Yeong-gi) of Ambush and also Paul Nicholson of Number 3.
How will the world pay to support its aging population? – economic growth will falter, since working-age populations will shrink. In the US, real potential GDP growth is projected to drop from 2.4% currently to 1.5% in 2043. Some of this can be offset. “If inflation starts eating into savings, people will want to come back to work,” Pradhan said—something that’s happening even now in the US. Any official move to raise the retirement age will not go down well with people who have been used to thinking of stopping work at 60 or thereabouts, Pradhan said. “Even in Russia, at a time when Vladimir Putin had a lot of popularity, he found it hard to push the retirement age up,” he said. But even if, de facto, people retire later, Pradhan is unsure of “how much this can be juiced. Already, by reducing pension benefits, we’ve made people aware of this.” In the EU, for instance, the labor force participation rate for people between the ages of 55-64 rose from around 43% in 2005 to around 64% in 2019. “I’m not sure how much higher we can drag that,” Pradhan said. – in some economies this can blunted through women’s increased participation in the workplace.
Criminal records checks of lion dance performers necessary, Hong Kong security chief says – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – “Given the unique nature of lion dance activities and attendant martial arts displays, it is necessary for the Government to ensure that public order is not disturbed and that public safety is not affected when such sport activities are conducted in public places,” he said. As of last month, the Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Dance Association had around 190 organisation members. In the year of 2018-2019, the association organised five dragon and lion dance competitions with funding from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The competition saw more than 200 participating teams and more than 2,100 participants in total. – National security implications given the lion dance’s close association with kung fu practitioners? There is also the subversive history of the lion dance.
Lion dancing gained its greatest fame during the Ching Dynasty. The Manchu reign at that time was an oppressive, inhumane government. Thousands of Chinese were massacres without any known cause until, it is said, “their blood literally reddened the rivers.” Ming loyalists attempting to foment rebellion against the Manchu warlords, expressed their hatred by inventing the green-faced lion. With brows made of twin steel swords, each measuring 1 foot 6 inches in length, the green lion represented the Manchu Government during the Ching Dynasty. Fighting the lion meant combating the Manchus.
Since lion dancing was performed in villages all over the country for the purpose of celebrations, the rebels would use the opportunity to exchange information and to collect money for the revolution. As part of the dance, the lion would eat lettuce — which is where the money would be hidden. The lead dancer would cry, “Choi ching!” (“get the Ching!”) to signal that he was a fellow revolutionary and, therefore, it was safe to pass information to him. However, informers soon figured out the battlecry. So, since chiang (meaning “green”) sounds very much like ching, the revolutionary passcode was changed to “Choi chiang!” (“get the green”). To this day, this revolutionary cry is used when the lion “eats” the symbolic lettuce and good luck money.
