27 Nov 23 Monday Briefing

The end of the year is nearly in sight

RIP Larry Fink (no, not the finance dude), the ceasefire holds, and Jack Ma expands into ready meals.

Die On This Hill

Scams are a scourge on society as much as human stupidity, hubris and greed are. Over the past 6 months, in Singapore alone, we have had people falling prey to scams involving fish, durian and yes, that old chestnut, love. I found this fascinating article about China’s all-out efforts to wipe out scam farms in northern Myanmar. It would seem some hills are worth dying on. Literally.

Deplorable No More

Alarm that Donald Trump is a serious contender for 2024 continues apace. No one seems to doubt that it won’t come down to Biden and Trump. The “deplorables” who gave Clinton the finger and the context around systemic ills is worth reading books about. One of their recent migrations, which I had little knowledge about, is amply covered in this piece by Max Fraser.

Starboard

That Geert Wilders won the Dutch election and that riots broke out in Dublin after a knifing should surprise no seasoned geopolitical watcher, but apparently, it took some by surprise. This starboard shift seems to be some kind of regression to the mean. Will we find balance, or will we keep shifting right?

We Never Knew Them At All…

… if we even knew them to begin with. Celebrities trade their privacy and some would argue their souls for glitz and adulation, but that contract turns sour, as it often does for female celebrities, we rarely hear their unmediated voice. Until their memoirs, that is, and even those tend to be ghostwritten. What happens when Britney and Pamela and Paris tell all?

Trust Me

Anyone who prefaces a statement with “trust me” should probably not be trusted, and yet, trust is the currency upon which so many human institutions hinge – money and marriage, for a start. What happens when the trust and safety officer of social media’s bad boy takes off, and what can we learn from that in the face of an impending AI apocalypse?