27 Jan 25 Monday Briefing
Happy Year of the Snake!
News Roundup
What a week, folks. Barely less than a week after TikTok got banned and then stayed, DeepSeek came along and blew the notion of premium subscriptions out of the water, Yoon got indicted, Colombia agreed to accept deportation flights in the face of tariff threats, and Trump sets about spring cleaning Capitol Hill… and all this before we ring in the Year of the Snake.
Watch/Scroll
Once and for all… it’s Chinese New Year, if we are to use the English language to describe it.
Not even Noah Smith is optimistic about reshoring manufacturing in the US, which should say a lot about the sorry state of things.
Move over, Hallyu. h/t
Read
Everyone is talking about DeepSeek this week, especially Silicon Valley. What happens when the emperors are all walking around naked? That said, AI is still creating a generation of illiterate programmers.
Ponder
When did modernity begin? What even is “modernity” that we conflate it with westernisation? The excellent
breaks it down for us.