Memia on Sunday 13-Mar-2022: opt-in mandates?💉// PanScan📱// interesting times🇺🇦🇷🇺🇨🇳🇮🇳🇳🇿// PeaceDAO🕊️// sustainabile☣️// pale business daddy🧑‍🦲

Little house on the toxic prairie

Kia ora,

I hope you are enjoying a relaxing weekend… in isolation or not!

In this week’s (slightly behind deadline!) Memia on Sunday:

Opt-in mandates…PanScan

• In a scenario of ongoing waves of Covid variants for years to come… could vaccination mandates move to an “opt-in” basis - or might we revert to the sci-fi scenario of “PanScan” - a global anonymized contact tracing app which recommends protection measures based upon who’s around you?

🇺🇦🇷🇺🇨🇳🇮🇳🇳🇿Interesting times

Our turbulent period of multi-dimensional geopolitics continues, narratives I’m tracking:

• 🇺🇦🇷🇺Russia’s blunt and almost certainly criminal invasion of Ukraine continues, in amongst the brutal shelling of civilians. Picking through the latest commentary on Russia’s assault, likely debt defaults, signs of an “off ramp” for Putin to de-escalate and shortening odds of a palace coup… but then what?

  • 🇺🇦Also: Ukrainian farmer memes

• 🇨🇳China:

  • Bond prices for Chinese property companies are in freefall:

    TheLastBearStanding @TheLastBearSta1

    🚨🚨Gradually, now Suddenly (3/11/21)👇👇 If you forgot about the Chinese property crisis - below are USD bonds of five of the largest and developers in China, with combined (reported) liabilities 3x larger than Evergrande. The true extent of their liabilities are unknown.

    

  • China is still sitting on the fence on the Russia / Ukraine war - and continues to simmer on its intentions for Taiwan - SCMP just put out this story “Why Beijing thinks Taiwan is different from Ukraine”

• 🇮🇳India:

  • Hold my beer: India “accidentally” fired a missile into Pakistan, allegedly after a technical malfunction.

    • Kiwi journalist Sandeep Singh’s analysis of India’s fence sitting

• 🔑🟤And here in Aotearoa:

  • Last week Global commodity prices rose 16%, driving domestic inflation towards a projected 7.4% annually. Clearly this is already causing a cost of living crisis - but the political “debate” reverted to a Key-era retread of lowering taxes. Like that’s going to make a difference.

    • TOP is proposing a UBI funded by a flat-rate Income Tax combined with a Land Value Tax instead…. they’ll need to play an A-grade meme game to communicate this extra complexity to an electorate who’ll always trust a Pale Business Daddy to know what’s best for them. (🧑‍🦲PBD - love that) Here’s their first attempt…a solid B, but could try harder:

      Raf Manji @rafmanji

      Tax policy is always an interesting conversation @top_nz #lvt #ubi #flattax

      

Weekend exploring

Regular weekend selection of links for your Sunday reading, listening and watching, including:

• Tech: Hands-on preview of the new Magic Leap 2

  • plus: PeaceDAO, and A.S. Lyons on the other side of CBDCs…

• “Little house on the toxic prairie”: Environmentalist Andy Kenworthy’s latest darkly hilarious Sustainabile post

• Aotearoa New Zealand Festival Of The Arts: check out the Online Writers stream including NK Jemisin and Mariana Mazzucato

• A little Blue Penguin spotted using thermal cameras and AI

• Sneak peak at the latest creation going up in the street art capital of Aotearoa, Ōtautahi

Have a relaxing Sunday!

ngā mihi

Ben