06 Nov 23 Monday Briefing
"are we there yet?"
We’re now in the home stretch of 2023, and personally, I cannot wait for the year to close. It has been more than I bargained for, but life carries on. Singapore will get a new PM by 2025, Japan and the Philippines decide that they should take their relationship to the next level, SBF is guilty (but we all reckoned he was), and anyone with half a brain fears that the war in the Middle East could spark a global recession.
Stay In Your Lane
The UK is waking up to the fact that e-scooters, e-bikes, personal mobility devices – whatever you want to call machine-assisted mobility on the roads and pavements – are a menace in the wrong hands, and they are mostly in the wrong hands (and feet). Numerous, and some fatal, fires have broken out in Singaporean flats because these devices are left to charge overnight, and until the ban a few years ago, accidents/incidents were only increasing. Requiring proper registration and licensing is a start, but barely enough.
This is why we can’t have nice things
I remember dabbling with SEO back in the day, stuffing post titles with keywords, churning out word salads without any AI aid, monitoring Google first page results like a hawk. And for what? The moment when you realise that Google is not the internet (unlike Myanmar, where Facebook is in effect the internet) is when it’s “turtles all the way down”.
This week’s must-read is about the dubious characters who made fortunes in the early cowboy days of the internet, where some of them are now, and why they are a huge reason we can’t have nice things.
9-5
While humorous at first glance (because TikTok), Gen Z’s desire not to be ruled by their 9-5 (mostly bullshit) jobs and the steps that they’re taking to make it a trademark of their generation is admirable. It isn’t only western. It’s even made it to Chinese youth’s Halloween costumes – also, China has really embraced Halloween, which is fun to see.
How much stock does each generation put in their work, and take it on as a core part of their identity? How many face existential crises when unceremoniously retrenched? All food for thought. Me? Never, once, when growing up did I dream of being a management consultant. The dream was to be an author and martial artist. If the next stage of my career could include a little of both, I’d have achieved that childhood dream.
Can we un-suck fiction?
Speaking of writing and publishing, why is American fiction so shitty nowadays (hint: corporatisation, acquisitions, $$$)? What happened to the once ubiquitous White-Guy Novel (hint: changing demographics, maybe)? And, if you’re a diehard fan of the og white guy bestseller, you can now own a replica of his folio for a couple hundred bucks.