01 Jul 24 Monday Briefing

Death Doula-ing, Politics for Days, and Making Merit

News Roundup

Readers, what was meant to be a routine gig sitting a geriatric cat went downhill towards the weekend, and I stepped in to help my partner death-doula an already blind, arthritic and for the last 72 hours of his life, an immobile cat. Speed-learning feline CPR on YouTube and setting three-hour timers to check for proof of life were not on our bingo cards for this weekend, but such is life. My partner and I are in agreement that this physical and emotional wreckage of a weekend has made clear to us that (1) we can indeed handle end-of-life decisions and (2) our pet-euthanasia criteria are in alignment. We humans are capricious and oft unwittingly cruel gods towards the animals we bring into our lives, and it is no bad thing to be reminded of that from time to time.

All this personal drama played out against a backdrop of wider political drama around the globe; you can’t turn your head for politics this year. Bardella & Co. is likely to sweep the first round of the snap election in France, pollsters predict a Tory wipeout in the UK this coming Thursday, Iran grapples with low turnout, and of course, the main course of last week, the US presidential election debate that has Democrats fuming and fretting.

Little wonder that US spies say that China has no preference for either candidate, seeing as “it’s like a variety show” anyway. I’m not sure what to make of that comparison, because variety / reality shows in Northeast Asia are generally of very high quality, both in terms of production and entertainment values.

Watch/Scroll

Who are the Hmong people, and why don’t they want to be East Asian?

South Asian cuisines pre-colonisation (pre-Islamic and pre-British) were arguably less… tasty. Shoot me.

Read

Alexandr Wang, arguably a D and an I in DEI, advocates for M (merit) E (excellence) I (intelligence) instead, and simultaneously endeared himself to the likes of Elon and annoyed everyone who benefited from the post-2020 DEI wave. Wang would be the darling of the spiritual core of Singapore’s technocracy.

What are energy drinks companies doing that other people are ignoring / ignorant of?

Ponder

It’s never too late to bloom – or is it? Does life really begin at 40? I’m curious, because I turn 40 in two years, and in the not so distant past, I would have been more than three quarters of the way to my grave, but now I am at barely half, if I’m lucky. Can we afford to bloom later because of increased lifespans, or did many of our ancestors never bloom at all because they never had the chance to reach a ripe old age? Or, why do we need to bloom at all? Is all this recent discourse of late blooming, second acts à la Henry Oliver a result of Gen Xers and Millennials getting angsty about their mortalities and their comparative lack of achievements?