I was wondering what they did with all those DVDs when they went out of business.

Jane Goodall at 90: “It’s no good just talking about what should be done. We’ve got to flipping well do it.”

A Shenzhen in the desert? SoftBank wants to turn Phoenix into a US AI and robotics hub.

It will use T-Mobile, the largest MVNO provider in the US, which is majority-owned by the German company Deutsche Telekom and whose second-largest shareholder is Japanese investor Softbank.

> “But the British couldn’t break Boston, the New York Yankees couldn’t break Boston and neither can Trump,” [Michael Goldman] says. It is not just Bostonians who should hope he’s right.
www.economist.com/united-state...

Hong Kong News Awards time again. Our story on how China missed the bitcoin boom after chasing the industry out was second runner up in English business news writing.

Don't see a lot of this around Hong Kong these days.

"For my kids, when every show is national and everything can be seen everywhere all at once, there can be no such rent in the fabric, no hole through which, seeing Milwaukee Bozo, they can recognize the phoniness of their own. To them, all the clowns are real."

Duterte has been out of office for less than three years. Attitudes change fast.

"President Xi Jinping has long argued that America is too polarised and overstretched to sustain its global role … His paranoid nationalism used to seem like dystopian hyperbole. Now that Mr Trump is committing such wanton self-harm and general destruction, it looks ahead of its time."

Some in China once lamented that the country's TV and movies were too backwards-looking, celebrating its imperial history but not possible futures. As the US increasingly romaticizes it's own past, it's worth remembering that having hope in the future first requires imagining one.

"Twain is funny and important today because his comedy is a hilarious celebration of our fears, our ineptitude and the glorious mess of being human. When we celebrate Twain, truly see him for who he was, we acknowledge our commonality and we move just a little bit closer together."

Dune was great, and I love a good Denis Villeneuve film, but if I'm being honest about the sci-fi film I had the most fun watching last year, it would definitely be Molli and Max in the Future. And the full film is on YouTube apparently.
youtu.be/_i_bdv3Ziww?...

Three years married to this lovely lady.

Some additional images from the Tanaka Tatsuya exhibit.

Tanaka Tatsuya has an exhibit at the Chiang Kai-shek memorial in Taipei. He's known for his creative use of miniatures.

While at a microbrewery in Tainan, a guy who works for TSMC walked in. He had just gotten back from a stint in Phoenix where he was doing work for the new plant. He brought the bar's owner a @dbacksbot.bsky.social hat. Rare to see gear from my favorite National League team on this side of the world.