25 Nov 24 Monday Briefing

Cheesy business

I’m writing this Monday Briefing from a lounge in IST, facing yet another >6hr delay in flights (Denver’s took the cake) due to Turkish Airlines’ late departure out of IAD. I have a pile of laundry waiting for me at home, along with spouse and furry four-legged niece, and I couldn’t be more eager to return to all of that. DC was also marvellously entertaining, both from a conference perspective and some of the social appointments’. Nothing screams DC more than ending up at a speakeasy with old money and sex addicts, and talking business at dinner just a few hours before.

News Roundup

The merry-go-round of Trump’s Cabinet nominations spins, Trump could help turn a separatist state (Somaliland, which I visited in 2018 for work, incidentally) into an actual one, Biden seems intent on a fiery swan song in Ukraine, Beijing’s USD1.4t stimulus appears to working the Asian equity markets, and my home country of Singapore gets cheesy with names.

Watch/Scroll

One of the better outcomes of my delayed IAD-IST flight was staying up long enough to watch Civil War on the in-flight entertainment system before it knocked me into a sound sleep. This movie might prove more prophecy than scenario over the next four years; watch it to understand why.

I’ve also been recommended The Day of the Jackal. What’s not to like about picking off fat-cat bankers?

Read

Business school rackets – what’s new? Academic fraud, apparently.

Terry Eagleton, my favourite living quasi-theologian, explains in brilliant detail why the Puritans and their descendants still rule American culture.

Ponder

The Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian was phenomenal, and I couldn’t have planned the timing better as November is Native American Heritage Month. Admittedly, though, as I am very driven by my stomach, the manoomin rice cake was the highlight of my museum visit rather than any particular exhibit. That said, the Trail of Tears section was poignant in its depiction of defiance, embodied in a peach, and the treaty exhibit was predictably eye-rolling and infuriating and informative all at once, especially in the light of the recent hikoi in Aotearoa/New Zealand.