Say Hello To My Asian Friend
October 15, 2019
“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli
Say Hello To My Asian Friend
Amid the Middle East conflagration abroad and political firestorms at home is a previously unreported international counter-narcotics investigation called Operation Kungur. Led by the Australian Federal Police, the operation involves about 20 agencies from Asia, North America and Europe. The prime target is a 55-year-old China-born Canadian national named Tse Chi Lop, who flies by private jet, and is protected by a guard of Thai kickboxers. Tse’s known as Asia’s El Chapo, and he’s the continent’s most wanted criminal.
It’s believed Tse leads a vast multinational drug trafficking syndicate formed out of an alliance of five of Asia’s triad groups. Members call it simply “The Company.” Law enforcement suspects the syndicate funnels tons of methamphetamine, heroin and ketamine to at least a dozen countries from Japan to New Zealand. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates the cartel’s 2018 meth revenue at $8 billion upwards to $17.7 billion, representing a 40 to 70 percent share of the wholesale regional meth market that has expanded at least fourfold since 2014.
The Southeast Asia and Pacific representative for UNODC puts Tse in the same league with infamous Latin American drug-traffickers El Chapo and Pablo Escobar. “The word kingpin often gets thrown around, but there is no doubt it applies here,” he said.
The crime network is enormously wealthy, disciplined and sophisticated — in many ways more so than any Latin American cartel. And, it’s less prone to uncontrolled outbreaks of inner-organizational violence than the Latin cartels, apparently choosing to set aside blood-soaked rivalries in a united pursuit of gargantuan profits.
A River No Longer Runs Through It
- China is poised to begin transforming a stretch of jagged hills and pristine jungle along a Mekong River tributary in northern Laos, one of the world’s most remote countries. The future dam will be one of seven Chinese-built hydropower projects on the Nam Ou River, all part of Beijing’s broader effort to propel some of Asia’s least-developed economies.
- It is progress, at the expense of the hundreds of communities along the great river that are set for demolition. (NYT)
Lie Detechtor
- Rose Eveleth is a writer and producer who explores how humans interact with science and technology. She doesn’t accept the assumption that the “natural evolution of technology” is progress that can’t, or shouldn’t, be stopped. She thinks it’s time to question what “progress” actually means.·
- For example, tech people see facial recognition, smart diapers and surveillance devices as inevitable inventions that people should want. But Eveleth thinks most consumers don’t actually have a good feeling about those things. The truth is there’s a growing chasm between how everyday users feel about the technology around them, and how companies decide what to make.·
- According to Eveleth, this “inevitable evolution” argument is the biggest lie tech people tell themselves — and the rest of us. (Vox)
- Warren Dares Facebook With Intentionally False Political Ad (NYT, $)
- Facebook sure does love free $peech (TechCrunch)
- Facebook Political Ads: What the 2020 Candidates’ Campaign Spending Reveals: The 12 Democrats who qualified for Tuesday’s debate are trying to reach specific voters with Facebook ads. (NYT, $)
- Children ‘interested in’ gambling and alcohol, according to Facebook: Exclusive: algorithm may expose thousands of under-18s to harmful targeted adverts (Guardian)
- Tech giants face higher tax bills under shake-up: New tax plans aimed at making global firms pay more tax have been published by an international economic body. (BBC)
- Everyone’s AirPods will die. We’ve got the trick to replacing them.: We shouldn’t let Apple turn headphones into expensive, disposable products because of bad battery design. (WaPo, $)
Caught White Handed
- In past presidential elections, prospective Democratic nominees would come to the Midwest and talk about ethanol and pork subsidies, not racial injustice and inequality. But in the era of Trump and Black Lives Matter, changing racial attitudes of white liberals are changing the way 2020 candidates are trying to win votes.
- According to new research, white liberals are thinking more explicitly about race than they did even a decade ago, and that’s changing the conversation.
- Now it’s white Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire — not black ones in South Carolina — who are rushing to embrace the candidates who promise to fight for racial equity. (NYT)
- To Decode White Male Rage, First He Had to Write in His Mother’s Voice: How Ben Lerner reinvented the social novel for a hyper-self-obsessed age. (NYT $)
The Marginally Larger Elephant In The Room
- Three University of Texas economics researchers did a study quantifying just how often the Electoral College will produce an “inversion;” i.e. an election where one candidate wins the popular vote, but the other is elevated to the presidency.
- The results were astonishing. In elections where one party prevails by just 2 points in the two-party popular vote, “inversions are expected in more than 30 percent of elections.” That number rises to 40 percent in elections with a 1 percentage-point margin. Republicans are the beneficiaries of narrow vote margins.
- The study suggests that in the modern era “Republicans should be expected to win 65 percent of Presidential contests in which they narrowly lose the popular vote.” Even with a three point margin favoring the Democrat, the Republican still has a one in six chance of winning. (Vox)
Throw All Your Cares Away…Or Else…
- Recent research suggests that stress is a key element in developing mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. When our brain decides that stress is required, signals are sent to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which in turn releases a complex sequence of chemicals that ends up with stress hormones, such as cortisol and glucocorticoids, being released into our bloodstream.
- Depression, weight gain, hypertension, a suppressed immune system, heart problems — all can be attributed to the persistent action of stress chemicals in the body. People experiencing chronic depression, including many who have committed suicide, have been shown to have significantly elevated levels of glucocorticoids, cortisol and other stress chemicals in their blood and tissues.
- Techniques and even courses for stress management are widely available, but the underlying principal boils down to these ten simple words: Face your fears. Be more active. Watch what you drink. (Guardian)
Yasuke Forever!
- In the works are two Hollywood films, a documentary and a feature length film, based on the life of Yasuke, the first foreign-born man to achieve the status of a samurai warrior. As the legend goes, a tall African man arrived in Japan some 440 years ago, during the rule of Oda Nobunaga, a powerful 16th Century feudal lord who was the first of the three unifiers of Japan.
- Yasuke was said to stand 6’2″ tall, a full foot above the average Japanese man. According to historian Lawrence Winkler, Yasuke arrived in Kyoto, the capital at the time, in 1579, causing such a sensation that people climbed over one another to get a glimpse of him, with some being crushed to death.
- After attaining the rank of samurai, Yasuke fought important battles alongside Nobunaga, until the latter fell at the hands of a treacherous general and Yasuke was exiled.
- Though his fate and the last years of his life remain unknown, Yasuke has lived on in the imaginations of many Japanese who grew up with the award-winning children’s book Kuro-suke (kuro meaning “black” in Japanese) by Kurusu Yoshio.
- Entertainment industry newspaper Variety reported in May that Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman is set to play Yasuke in the feature film. (BBC)
Sleeping is a Competitive Advantage
- I tried to hack my insomnia with technology. Here’s what worked.: Fancy trackers and headbands are all part of a growing sleep-tech industry. I decided to put them to the test. (Technology Review)
- Sleep Deprivation Shuts Down Production of Essential Brain Proteins: A deficit arises in molecules needed for neurons to communicate efficiently (Scientific American)
- Can a $1,300 baby bed make me a better mom?: The Snoo promises more sleep, but the problems families face are too big for furniture to fix (Curbed)
- NBA exec: ‘It’s the dirty little secret that everybody knows about’ (ESPN) and perhaps LeBron James isn’t getting enough sleep when being interviewed: LeBron James: Daryl Morey was ‘misinformed’ before sending tweet about China and Hong Kong (ESPN)
LAST MORSELS
“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day — Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra-death.”
“The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. The leading causes of disease and death in developed nations—diseases that are crippling health-care systems, such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes, and cancer—all have recognized causal links to a lack of sleep.”
– Matthew Walker