The Question
Should people be allowed to film 'random acts of kindness' for their TikTok audiences in public?
Talking Points
- The Uber files revealed the case for reining in Big Tech
- An ex-CIA coder was convicted of espionage
- Twitter sued Elon Musk over his joke takeover bid
- An Ohio child-rape case shook post-Roe America
- Ivana Trump died at age 73
- Rishi Sunak cemented himself as the Tory frontrunner
- The Euro fell to parity with the USD
- France braced for gas (and dijon) shortages
- Italian politics update: still dysfunctional
- Spanish culture update: still running with bulls
Deep Dive
This week, a tour of the Subcontinent. Gotabaya Rajapaksa finally took the hint and people partied through the state of emergency. Pakistan is flooding (both ways) and India claims more bragging rights.
Gota gone
This week, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fulfilled an idle daydream of unsatisfied employees everywhere: he quit effective immediately via email. Less dreamed about: he fled the country on a military plane, bound first for Maldives en route to Singapore . The following morning (coincidentally: Bastille Day) he submitted his resignation letter to the parliamentary speaker. Rajapaksa was more than happy to relinquish his presidential immunity once he was beyond the jurisdiction of his countryfolk . Last week's well-mannered storming of the presidential palace gave their leader all the evidence he needed to make his exit. It gave us a laugh. On display was the goodwill and humour of the demonstrators, variously bathing in the presidential pool or pretending to host summits amongst themselves. That the protesters stayed in droves to clean up after themselves is simply divine.
With the Rajapaksa clan either in exile or keeping very quiet at home, Sri Lankan heads turn to the future. Protesters and police traded tear gas canisters during the week while political factions grasped for power. The long-overdue resignation has left Ranil Wickremesinghe as both head of state and government. He too is trying to resign ( with much encouragement from his constituents). For now, he has declared a state of emergency. But in Colombo people ignored the curfew as they celebrated all night . Parliament meets on Wednesday to select a new president. Displaying just how deeply the ruling party is tapped into the zeitgeist, its preferred candidate is... Ranil Wickremesinghe. This is both wrongheaded and self-defeating. So it will doubtless be the chosen course of action. Given the opposition lacks the seats to form government , it will be a miracle if another candidate makes it through.
Pakistan underwater
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had years to agonise over the country's finances. Government debt ballooned during the pandemic as the economy sank. Supply chain chaos and shortages hampered trade. Khan turned to the International Monetary Fund for a loan but the deal soured. The IMF wanted the largesse of fuel and energy subsidies cut in the name of improving public finances. But these are cherished benefits that help millions of Pakistanis keep their heads above water. Today Imran Khan is out of a job (although he's notably keen to regain his old one) and Pakistan's economy is in a worse spot.
Inflation was 21% in June , and dwindling foreign reserves have set off alarm bells in Islamabad. Khan's successor, Shahbaz Sharif, didn't need long to agonise. He's thrown caution to the wind and negotiated a $1.9bn injection. See here the universal laws of cause and effect. Fuel costs, which have been rising precipitously all year, will jump higher as subsidies are pulled. Public unrest, which was out of control in the final months of Khan's premiership, is just around the corner. If next year's general election is brought forward, as Khan's party is advocating, then Sharif may not be around long enough to see the benefit of that budget repair.
And, if heavy-handed metaphors are your thing, Pakistan's financial capital Karachi is flooded right now.
Quantity and quality
And finally, to India. As of next year it will eclipse China as the most-populous nation . In a less arbitrary and more resonant news item, India has also retained its crown as the world-leader of endearing scams. The town which produced a low-budget IPL for YouTube to fleece Russian gamblers is a peach. Unsurpassed levels of ingenuity.
Worldlywise
Henan bank protests
There are always going to be shades of truth when reporting on scandals in China. State-sanctioned explanations are full pulp novel gangs and shadowy foreign interference. Usually sage foreign newspapers can't help including the sub-text: we told you so. Information comes at a premium, or not at all, so everyone is mired in the fog. The outline of China's dovetailing finance and housing crises can be read in the various corporate filings of teetering developers. But last weekend the mist cleared, however briefly, and revealed a mass-protest in Henan province.
On Sunday, one thousand depositors occupied the steps of the Zhengzhou branch of the People's Bank of China. The list of demands was short: their money. In April a bank run on four Henan and Anhui regional banks caused them to freeze accounts. In June some of those angry customers, fresh from protesting out the front of their local branch, began receiving COVID red warnings from the government. It's difficult to read this as anything other than technological crowd control. There were visits from village party secretaries to shame their families. Instead, those protesters stepped up their action and travelled to Henan's capital city for a demonstration (judiciously choosing a spot right under a poster of Mao Zedong). They were met with harassment and plain assault by plainclothes police; some demonstrators were followed home.
Regulators have since stepped in to assure depositors that some of their holdings will be covered . Whatever bad stuff was happening at the banks could apparently be ascribed to a criminal gang. But there is a vein of bad debt the continues to run beneath China's growth. The reversal of house-prices has hit the industry like a tonne of bricks. As officials clamp down, more debt (and fraud) is being revealed.
Crypto whales beached and decaying
Avid readers will recall our discussion about Alex Mishinsky's Celsius Netowrk last month. The major crypto lender , carved up by collapsing cryptocurrency values and climbing interest rates IRL, halted withdrawals for its 100,000 users. Mishinsky promised it was a short-term measure to "stabilise" Celsius. This week Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy . Papers before the court outline a clean billion dollar gap between its assets and liabilities. That has unleashed a torrent of anguish, embarrassment, and rage among Celsius users — if treated as unsecured creditors they will be left to swallow the loss. Life-savings may have been lost in toto.
The other major bankruptcy from this month was the largest crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital. 3AC (as it is known in the industry) was based in the British Virgin Islands and had its sticky fingers in every pie. It borrowed heavily, amassing far more leverage than common sense would brook. 3AC and its founders, Zu Shu and Kyle Davis, became ubiquitous in the space as lenders and investors. The Terra/Luna collapse blew in 3AC's books. Lido Finance's staked Ether collapse worsened it. The founders declared bankruptcy on the first day of the month and, having finally learned some lessons from traditional finance, disappeared . A judge has granted liquidators permission to subpoena the mislaid pair and to protect whatever assets are left.
Reflecting on 3AC, one fund manager offered this, "They might have been stupid and misguided, especially in a market like this that's buckling under macro pressures. But they really believe this stuff, and you can see it in their books, right? You wouldn't have traded this way, if you didn't believe that this was true." As has become painfully evident this year, there is point at which bullish becomes bullshit.
The Worst Of Times
Saying when: a few years early
A problem with the concept of seasoning to taste is that salt tastes good but isn't very good for you. This study of 500,000 middle-aged Britons found that those who add salt to their meals after the cooking process are 28% more likely to suffer premature death. The extra seasoning can wipe off a year and a half for women and more than two for men.
Cancerous charcuterie
We've known for years the links between cancer and cured meats — we've all been ignoring it. This will be significantly harder now that France's food and safety agency has confirmed the association between the nitrates and nitrites used in curing and colorectal cancer. Nothing is sacred.
The Best Of Times
Human context
Yeah, we know. You've been looking at these all week. Too bad. We'll keep republishing shots from the James Webb Space Telescope until each and every one of you has meditated on why our increasing sense of insignificance in the universe only heightens the significance of our planet. There is no higher calling than preserving it.
Make an origami crane the size of a desk
Enough deadlines and benchmarks. A new frontier in psychology is opening up: the profound benefits of pointless goals . Turn your entire house into a pillow-fort. Walk every single street in your suburb. Try and get your yodelling into the Guinness World Records book. Consciously make joy your goal.
Highlights
The Image
Firefighters defending a grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite national park. The oldest tree in Mariposa grove is over 3,000-years-old. Image supplied by The Guardian .
The Quote
"[On Michael Jordan] I wish I could've played in his generation, though. Just how he go about the game, that mindset he had... I would like to play against him... I would've cooked him, too."
– Memphis Grizzlies talisman Ja Morant has a lesson for children everywhere: Don't emulate your idols. Have the confidence to say you'd cook them in a one-on-one.
The Numbers
45 minutes of peace on Earth
- Twitter crashed and stayed down this week. It was the longest outage that the social media platform has ever suffered. This brief outage spurned nearly a full hour of quiet contemplation. If Twitter went down for a day, all the energy and imagination expended on it could be redirected into a new Renaissance.
100% tuna...?
- There's something fishy about Subway — it's just not the fish . A US federal judge has allowed a fraud and false advertising suit to proceed against the fast-food chain. Subway uses the claim "100% tuna" in its advertising, but an expert found "no detectable tuna DNA sequences whatsoever" in 19 of the 20 tuna samples tested.
The Headlines
"Philippines mayor orders government workers to smile – or else" — The Guardian .
"How to successfully smash your face against a tree" — The Atlantic .
The Special Mention
Brandy Bottone, a 32-year-old Dallas local takes the chocolates this week. She was recently pulled over for driving alone in a carpool lane. Unperturbed, the heavily-pregnant Bottone fired back at the cop that new abortion laws in Texas conferred personhood to the foetus in her womb. We don't fancy her chances when she goes before a judge, but you've gotta hand it to her.
The Best Long Reads
- Financial Times sits down with Lula, the Redeemed
- The Atlantic on Picasso's biggest flop: Guernica
- Bloomberg Businessweek can't delete WeChat
