The Grey Swan Guild News Wrap — The Week That Was May 14, 2021.
Grey Swan Guild — News Wrap Edition: #17 of Vol. 1
These are a series of stories and headlines we are tracking in the
Grey Swan Guild’s Global League of Sensemakers Newsroom. Here is The Great, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of what we observed this week.
We have added almost a dozen new events which you can check out on our new handy, dandy, ics friendly calendar. You can register for events on our Calendar and post them to your very own special calendar that rules your day.
This week… if making vodka out of thin air, going glamping, hiring a tiny cabin in the woods and taking psychedelics (without the trip) sounds like the perfect recipe for a great escape, you may well get your wish soon.
We travel across the pond from tinsel town to tonsil town for another unmasked, 4,000 people strong UK social experiment at The BRIT Awards, wait in anticipation for a foldable iPhone, use cargo drones to save lives in Africa and learn about China’s population growth declining for the first time since the 1950s. But it’s not all vodka drinks, vaccine cocktails and award shows this week. We get knocked down.
We get a wake-up call when we learn just how bad NFT’s are for the environment, Elon Musk‘s tweet follows the same vein, throwing Bitcoin and Tesla off balance and we begin to appreciate how difficult it's going to be to get everyone back into the office as we deal with pre-pandemic thinking and “re-entry anxiety” Yes, it’s a thing.
Israel-Gaza violence and US mass shootings top it off and we learn that there are cities where the environment is more likely to kill you, which are almost all in Asia. You might want to plan your post-vaccination great escape somewhere else…
Meanwhile.
Let’s Wrap.
Your thoughts? Why not join us on Sunday, May 16th at 11am (EST) / 4pm BST on Clubhouse to engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray and Antonia Nicols.
The Great 😇
- Fancy a CO2 vodka martini? Bubble not shaken Mr Bond? Carbon dioxide gets a bad rap for the greenhouse effect it causes in the atmosphere, but what if you could drink it? Air Company tech, in partnership with NASA, is being used to capture CO2, convert it into ethanol, and then into glucose — a basic sugar molecule that can be used to produce food aboard space ships, including lab-grown meat. And vodka. Shaken or stirred. Cheers!
- Catch me if you can. What happens when Americans stop flying? It seems they go glamping or opt for socially distanced, tiny cabins in the woods. Getaway, an upstart hotel company that builds tiny-house-style cabins on rustic sites, reached an unheard-of occupancy rate of 99% during the pandemic. And the cherry on top? Absolutely. No. WiFi.
- Follow the white rabbit, Alice. A Psychedelic-like drug that doesn’t cause hallucinations? Now that’s a breakthrough. Psychedelics have long shown promise for treating a host of mental illnesses including depression and PTSD by promoting neural plasticity — allowing the brain to rewire itself. Now, scientists have identified a compound that provides the benefits, without the trip. Big pharma won’t like this at all.
The Good 😀
- From tinsel town to tonsil town. If last month’s Oscars took place in tinsel town then The BRIT Awards this week was very much tonsil town as 4,000 unmasked people underwent a Covid test on their way to the event. The audience, including key workers from Greater London and the artists' guests, were willing participants of the UK government’s pilot scheme for reopening live events safely, including the forthcoming FA Cup Final. Let’s hope it’s not an own goal. Swizzle once, spit twice and sit down is the emerging mantra.
- Bend me, fold me any way you want me. The rumour mills are running overtime speculating when, not if, Apple will launch its foldable iPhone. Typically, Apple has bided its time allowing competitors to iron out all of the practical problems foldable phones present. And the suspected date for release? 2023, according to respected industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Will you fold on this one?
- Straight from the Hunger Games, pandemic edition. African nations are using cargo drones to save lives. Getting antiretroviral drugs and supplies into the hands of HIV-positive patients in rural areas across the continent is tricky, to say the least. In Uganda alone, Lake Victoria’s 84 remote islands are home to an estimated 64,000 people with an HIV incidence rate of 18% — far above the national average of 5.6%, which is way, way too high.
The Bad 😬
- iQIYI and chill method? Babies, or the lack of them, are set to derail China’s growth. The world’s most populous country reported the slowest rate of population growth since the 1950s as a result of their now-defunct one-child policy, rising living costs and changing social mores. Not great news for an economy built on high-quality labour and consumer demand.
- E “lost the plot” Musk and the do-gooding artists.“You need Amazons, not trees to offset NFTs!” It seems that many in the art world failed to consider that crypto art is staggeringly bad for the environment. NFT’s have given the hard-hit art world a real boost during the pandemic. However, trading ownership of a single NFT is estimated to emit the carbon equivalent of a two-hour flight or a month of a European resident’s electricity consumption. What will Banksy do?
- Good luck Chuck. The battle over Post-pandemic corporate culture plays out in real-time. It’s in the balance. The Washingtonian’s editorial staff stopped work last Friday after Catherine Merrill, CEO of Washington Media, penned an op-ed column saying corporate managers have “a strong incentive” to demote employees who don’t return to their offices. The dispute highlights emerging complexities for companies around the world. Go back to the office, go hybrid or go home? Whither the labour unions of the past? The Neo-IWW anyone?
The Ugly 😱
- Intefada outa control. Israel-Gaza violence: it’s a 100-year-old issue. An escalation of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has led the UN to warn of a “full-scale war”. The latest violence followed a month of rising tensions in Jerusalem, sparked by the threat of forced expulsion of Palestinian families from the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
- Bang. Bang. Are we in the middle of a perfect storm for US mass shootings? Criminologists think so, pointing to economic collapse, Covid’s severing of social connections and mistrust in police as a start. Last weekend there were at least 11 mass shootings across the US, taking the total to 178 this year, leaving 206 people dead and 693 injured (Wikipedia).
- The bad kind of Malthusian management. The cities most vulnerable to environmental hazards are almost all in Asia (99 out of the top 100). Jakarta takes first place, closely followed by Dehli and Chennai. It seems there are more than 400 large cities with a total population of 1.5 billion that are at “high” or “extreme” risk because of a mix of life-shortening pollution, dwindling water supplies, deadly heatwaves, natural disasters and the climate emergency. It’s clearly time for change. Lives and quality of life are at stake. #climatechange #greyswan
Meme of the Week
Pretty much sums it up. At least Zoom touches up your appearance if you know where to find the settings. Start Video | Video Settings | My Video | Touch up my appearance (for the chap below and Teams users, who aren’t familiar with such luxuries).
Chart of the Week
It started with a tweet. Tesla‘s ’CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that the company would no longer accept Bitcoin as a payment method for its cars with this chart. This announcement sent the price for Bitcoin (and Tesla) spiralling down although the cryptocurrency has since made a partial comeback.
Term of the Week
“Re-Entry Anxiety”. COVID-19 has been categorised as a mass trauma — when many people go through a hugely traumatic event at the same time. There are three essential stages to recovery: establishing safety, remembrance and mourning and reconnection. The symptoms range from fear, distress, mistrust, depression, anxiety in social and public places, worries about reinfection (despite being vaccinated), exposure to other illnesses, death and future disasters and we’re likely to see increased absenteeism, social avoidance and self-imposed isolation. It’s definitely a thing.
Photo of the Week
The + POOL finally has an address at the Lower East Side waterfront just north of the Manhattan Bridge, NYC. The floating pool is designed to filter over 600,000 gallons of river water daily, not only cleaning the river but offering swimmers a veritable playground. It was initially launched as a Kickstarter in 2011 and has spent the last decade raising money through plans, fundraisers and pledges. + POOL still has some major regulatory hurdles to jump so it may be some time before you strip down to your speedo and take a dip in the East River.
Video of the Week
Grease me, baby, grease me. How much would you pay to oil your network? This week, Colonial Pipeline, the US’s largest fuel pipeline, paid ransomware hackers (known as DarkSide) nearly $5m in ransom to get the fuel flowing again. Historically, the FBI has discouraged American ransomware victims from paying hackers. With massive disruption across the US, a rise in gas prices and some stations closed, it seems pragmatism ruled the day. This is a supervillain level of crime right out of a James Bond or Jackie Lee movie. What are things coming next Moriarty?
That’s the Wrap! Your thoughts?
Why not join us on Sunday, May 16th at 11am (EST) / 4pm BST on Clubhouse to engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray and Antonia Nicols.
See you next week for Edition #18 where we will ponder and ruminate on the week that was, what it means for the future and Wrap it for you.
The GSG Medium is The Message
Visit our Medium channel every Friday for a weekly wrap on the world’s biggest challenges and other fresh articles and points of view The Guild is sharing. Please drop by our Grey Swan Guild website (greyswanguild.org) for more publications and articles about how we make sense of the world ongoing and also the raft of possibilities to participate as a Sensemaker.
This Week’s Grey Swan News Wrap Editor: Louise Mowbray, with help from the Editorial Team: @Doyle, @sylvia, @rob, @agustin, @sean, @antonia and @Ben.
Grey Swan Guild — Making Sense of What’s Next
Every 2nd and last Wednesday of every month we onboard new members with the co-founders of the guild.
We call these sessions Regattas and Bank & Wedge sessions. Why not join us and learn more about becoming a member of our movement? Come and ride our wave alongside our 2nd thousand members who are flocking in.
Regatta Onboardings: 2nd Wednesday of every month.
Bank and Wedge Onboardings: Last Wednesday of every month.
Grey Swan Guild
Our mission is to Make Sense of the World’s Biggest Challenges — curating and creating knowledge through observation, informed futurism, sensemaking and analysis. Our proposition is to inspire the world to think differently through Sensemaking intelligence, The Foundry learning and The Leader’s Alliance business activation realms — it’s the Grey Swan Guild Way. 🦢
