I’m starting 2024 as I mean to go, writing – a Monday briefing, for a start, but a lot more in the next 365 days. I was tempted to do a 366 posts challenge, one for each day of this Dragon leap year but soon thought the better of it. The upcoming year will be busy, with at least two major side projects in the works, expansion of ricebowl portfolio, and more leisure travel around Asia.
The weekend leading into 2024 has been relatively quiet on the global front (save a 7.6 earthquake that hit Japan today), but we enter the new year with two grinding conflicts, yet another supply chain snarl, more geopolitical posturing, and several elections (Taiwan, Indonesia, the US) ripe for the picking. Turmoil could be something to dread, but it could also offer opportunities for those determined to make the best of everything they’re given. I don’t think I’ll be adjusting my risk profile significantly this year, but I will be open to whatever comes my way, in the least scammy way possible.
There is no particular theme in 2024’s first Monday briefing except a selection of things I wanted to share. Enjoy!
Witches, Dragons, Magical Trees, oh my!
2023’s favourite read (finished just over the Christmas holiday) is Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree, and no, I’m not saying this because the LGBT representation is both enrapturing and nuanced, but because Shannon has done the near impossible. This book has made me fall in love with fiction again, specifically fantasy. I’m working my way through the prequel A Day of Fallen Night now, and who knows, maybe it’ll be my favourite read of 2024. If you want to read a talented young author’s meticulous world building, exhilarating fight scenes, and fully-realised characters, I urge you to give Shannon a try. (Also, it would seem that Gen Z reads print books. Yay!)
Virtus in media stat
Are means no longer golden? Aristotle might agree with Franklin’s book that expounds on corporate America’s obsession with creativity, a concept which in and of itself means nothing. It is almost certainly not a virtue, no matter what some obsessives might think. Creativity really only springs from a state of true starvation or need, not cushy structured programmes or worse, design thinking workshops. Creativity in this milieu is, in Franklin’s description, a cult. I couldn’t agree more.
Railway Children
I hadn’t thought rail would appeal to the UAE, given how they skipped that age and went almost directly into the jet one. The need to reduce emissions and find alternatives that are both sustainable and desert-friendly seems to be the driving force behind the GCC Railway Project. Will we finally see a serious push in implementing hyperloop and other next-gen magnetic technologies? I sure hope so.
Waaaaaait don’t go
Barkan thinks that the zeitgeist is changing, that people are going fiercely offline as a backlash to the tech era. I wouldn’t like it if all my readers did that, so please keep your email at the very least. 🥲 Once again, I’ll point you to the golden mean – any virtue taken to excess is no virtue at all. Temper online use, and I’m sure we’ll all be more balanced specimens.