The Grey Swan Guild News Wrap — The Week That Was May 6, 2021.
Grey Swan Guild — News Wrap Edition: #16 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.
Was it Tequila that caused Bill Gates to file for divorce after 27 years? We might never know about Bill, but we do know which are the best Tequilas to have during Cinco de Mayo.
Will we need a 3D printed house to house the world’s first Nonuplets? Yes, we had to look that up as well. It’s a lot. Of Children. At once. But with 3D printing churning out the full-scale houses, maybe we could combine the two?
Jet packs are a thing, and Dante’s ‘Inferno’ gets a horrifying real-life close-up in India, and yes, it’s making all of us COVID-19 anxious.
Meanwhile.
Let’s do the Wrap.
Join us Sunday, May 9th at 11am (EST) on Clubhouse to engage with your favorite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie and Louise Mowbray.
The Great 😇
- What will the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ do now? The way your house gets built is changing. Imagine one that is built from the ground up by a 3D Printer Farfetched? Not really. And this will be done more and more in the future, as we look for quick and easy ways of housing our growing global population. And in this case, it’s the Europeans move into the first fully 3D printed house.
- We’ve seen a steady move towards blockchain currency adoption. And when the World’s Leading Auction and Real Estate Firm Sotheby’s start accepting BTC & ETH, we all sit up and take notice.
- Call the nanny! How many diapers & bottles a day would that be? A Malian woman gives birth to 9 babies. Halima Cisse, 25, gave birth to five girls and four boys and all were delivered by caesarean section. That’s called Nonuplets for those who are wondering. And still more diapers and bottles.
The Good 😀
- We’ve put in place many constraints over the years, that sometimes we suddenly realize that they don’t actually make much sense. Perhaps COVID-19 has ‘taught’ us how best to work and perform? Does consulting really have to be in person?
- We’re testing the way COVID-19 moves amongst us. This time with a bit of fun and entertainment. A packed pilot festival brings the good times back. For one night Blossoms play to 5,000 fans in Liverpool to help gather research for this summer’s festival season. Science overlaps with entertainment. Could these be Rock N Roll COVID-19 heroes? The Beatles approve we thinks.
- Travel is still on the cards, for EU. A certification plan for the EU unveils plans for overseas tourists to return, and yes, it includes vaccines. Hopefully, this will bring a revival to the region?
The Bad 😬
- Geographers are concerned about the spread of fake, AI-generated satellite imagery. While it might seem harmless, such pictures could mislead us in a variety of ways, such as creating hoaxes about wildfires or floods or discrediting stories based on real satellite imagery.
- Still scared or concerned about going out — even after your vaccination? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. As many as one in five people could struggle with the return to normality. The rise of COVID-19 anxiety syndrome is prevalent, but there is a reason. We're beating the virus, yet many have been left with a chronic fear of reintegrating. How can we break free of this self-imposed lockdown? While many of us are enjoying the chance to socialise and travel normally, some are clinging fearfully to the safety behaviours enforced upon us during the pandemic. What was once a rational response to danger has become a “maladaptive” response as the danger recedes.
- How do you split Billions of dollars? Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing. The couple’s separation is likely to send shock waves through the worlds of philanthropy, public health and business. And, who gets the Furby collection?
The Ugly 😱
- If there’s a will, there’s some fraud, with a sprinkling of torturous love. 20% rise in bank fraud linked to online dating scams during lockdown. These “Romance” scams increase by 12 per cent annually to £18.5m between January and November 2020. Can this be stopped? Is this a symptom of loneliness and mental health issues? Or does online interaction spur on soulless criminals? Is KYC on Match.com, on the horizon? Our guess is a public service education campaign is needed to help warn people and reduce the crime. Why do some people have to ruin it for everyone?
- Speaking of fraud, yet another infodemic challenge at a human scale. Fraud — it’s not just for lovers anymore. Over £1.6 billion of fraud in the UK was stopped in 2020. However, criminals turned to online and technology-enabled scams to exploit people’s fears about the COVID-19 pandemic, evading banks’ advanced security systems and using digital platforms to target victims directly and tricking them into giving away their money or information, avoiding banks’ security measures. Incorrigible.
- India’s COVID-19 wards are like scenes from Dante’s ‘Inferno’. Black market oxygen, rows of patients struggling to breathe — the pandemic has cruelly exposed systemic issues, and it will probably last longer than we think. COVID-19 is fast and relentless: a mere 3 months ago, this catastrophe of epic proportions wasn’t even on the radar.
Meme of the Week
Old memes never die, they just get famous (and rich)?
The World Knows Her as ‘Disaster Girl.’ She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme.
Zoë Roth, now a college senior in North Carolina, plans to use the proceeds from this month’s NFT auction to pay off student loans and donate to charity.
PS. This wasn’t a real fire, it was a Fire Department doing a fire exercise controlled burn
Chart of the Week:
How do you like THAT margin?
Apple’s AirPods have emerged as one of the company’s most successful products in the Tim Cook era. Are you surprised? The additional news is that the margin on airpods is a whopping 59%! Excessive, or is this ‘just’ Apple doing business?
Term of the Week
“Cinco De Mayo” —might need a Spanish spellcheck for some of us… and it's not always defined as Taco Tuesday, either. But, where would we be without Mexico and the Mexican elixir, Tequila? Basically, everyone loves Tequila.
Here are the best bottles of Tequila for 2021.
Photo of the Week:
What would you do with the money? A town in Japan spent $230,000 in COVID-19 relief funds… on a 43-foot GIANT squid statue.
Noto, a fishing town where the squid is a delicacy, erected the statue in March in a bid to promote tourism after the pandemic subsides. The five-and-a-half-ton pink sea creature sits outside a squid-themed restaurant and tourist centre. What’s on the menu? We don’t know how well it’s working, but 10 points for a freakishly weird statue, complete with an opening to suck up small children. And we’re not sure we want to crawl into its belly, either.
Video of the Week
Can you imagine this suddenly showing up on your boat?
The British Royal Navy and Royal Marines have tested out a jet suit developed by the company Gravity Industries. Gravity says its suit can fly up to 80 mph and climb to 12,000 feet in the air. While they’ve been testing the suit for years, it’s getting closer to seeing it in regular operation.
That’s the Wrap! What’s Your Idea?
See you next week for Edition #17, it, May, it’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and our thought will turn to nature, love and learning, or, perhaps other things that are emerging along with the rock-star GDP in countries with effective vaccine programs.
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: Doyle Buehler this week’s news wrap editor with help from the Editorial Team @sylvia, @rob, @agustin, @sean, @louise and Ben Thurman.
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