18 Dec 23 Monday Briefing
Is it Christmas yet?
I spent this Monday much as I spent last Monday, at the hospital with my grandmother, whose condition deteriorated. She’s in ICU for assisted breathing, stable but still not out of the woods yet. The amount of well wishes for her recovery that poured in was very touching. Tomorrow is her 90th, and I will also be flying to Lanna land (Chiang Mai) for a much anticipated break over Christmas. As such, there will be no Monday briefing next Monday on Christmas Day, but a Christmas post instead.
In other news, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has decided to return sixteen Khmer artefacts to Cambodia and Thailand (via
), Temu and Shein continue to spat (and Vox tells us why Temu continues to feed American addiction to cheap consumer shit), storms and floods bedevil Queensland and the Eastern US Seaboard, and the grand old lady of Paris gets a new golden rooster.Ship me baby one more time
A global shipping crisis is imminent, it would seem. MSC, the world’s largest shipping company, announced that it would not ship through the Suez Canal due to ongoing drone attacks from Houthi militants, and BP has announced that it will follow suit with its oil and gas shipments through the Red Sea. What does this all mean? Delays and increased costs, for a start. What a pre-Christmas present no one asked for. Economics Explained handily sums up how vital shipping still is to the global economy, looking at Greece in particular.
Best Books
“Best Book” lists are popping up left, right and centre. Everyone and their uncle has an opinion, and not that you should attempt to devour 100 books in a year, but if you’re so inclined, here are 10 tips courtesy of Ali Abdaal. Here are a few I think are worth considering – best China books of 2023, best cookbooks of 2023, and best sci-fi and fantasy of 2023. What do you think, should I compile my own list of I read this and I think you should too?
How to fry a catfish
One of the more intriguing articles I’ve read in the past week involves catching catfish (the human kind) in a way that isn’t reminiscent of the MTV show’s formula. Scamsters and their scams are notoriously hard to unravel and even harder to track and bring to justice, much less an international network of them, so this article featuring a female detective makes for even better reading. What a ride.
Eye on the tiger
A common joke goes that no one really knows what Xi Jinping wants, not even XJP himself, and the same could be said of Putin. The same cannot be said for Shi Yuanhua, a scholar you’ve probably never heard of, who expounds on what he thinks is China’s grand strategy in Asia and beyond. Less grand but no less impressive is the way ReelShort has stealth-conquered the US with its “soapy micro-series”. Also, when you have a spare couple of hours, sit down and tuck into (pun intended) Fuchsia Dunlop on the story of Chinese food (I’m not keen on the gaudy porcelain on the cover art of her latest book, but her expertise is never in doubt).