A bank strike in Ireland in 1970 forced people to fall back on IOUs and a strange experiment in life without banks. CC-licensed photo by Stuart Smith. on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Liquid assets. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Diplomacy by WhatsApp • New Cartographies
Nicholas Carr:
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The most telling precedent for what we’re seeing today is the change in diplomatic practices that occurred with the arrival of international telegraph and telephone lines in the late nineteenth century — an episode I describe in my book Superbloom. The unprecedented ability of far-flung leaders and diplomats to talk directly with each other without delay spurred great hopes. It seemed obvious that the resulting exchanges would ease friction and encourage goodwill among nations. Nikola Tesla, in an 1898 interview about his work on wireless telegraph systems, said that he would be “remembered as the inventor who succeeded in abolishing war.” His rival, Guglielmo Marconi, declared in 1912 that wireless telegraphy would “make war impossible.”
What actually happened was altogether different. In the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, telegraphic communications inflamed tensions rather than dampening them. Writes the French historian Pierre Granet: “The constant transmission of dispatches between governments and their agents, the rapid dissemination of controversial information among an already agitated public, hastened, if it did not actually provoke, the outbreak of hostilities.”
The start of the First World War in 1914, two years after Marconi announced the end of war, was similarly hastened by the new communication mediums. After the June 28 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, hundreds of urgent diplomatic messages raced between European capitals through newly strung telegraph and telephone wires. As the historian Stephen Kern describes in The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918, the rapid-fire dispatches quickly devolved into ultimatums and threats. “Communication technology imparted a breakneck speed to the usually slow pace of traditional diplomacy and seemed to obviate personal diplomacy,” Kern writes. “Diplomats could not cope with the volume and speed of electronic communication.”
Diplomacy, a communicative art, had been overwhelmed by communication. By August, the world was at war.
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This historical precedent doesn’t feel encouraging, does it? What with all the world leaders WhatsApping each other like a gaggle of teenage girls on a rainy weekend.
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BBC announces landmark deal to make bespoke content for YouTube • The Guardian
Lauren Almeida:
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The BBC has announced that it will produce tailor-made content for YouTube in a milestone for British television as the public service broadcaster teams up with the world’s biggest video platform.
The corporation has previously posted clips and trailers for BBC shows on YouTube but under the new deal it will make fresh programming for its online rival.
The content would span a mixture of entertainment, news and sport, starting with the Winter Olympics in February, the BBC said.
The broadcaster is fighting to adapt to a rapidly changing media landscape. YouTube, which is owned by Google, overtook the BBC last month in terms of audience share for the first time. Almost 52 million people watched YouTube on their televisions, smartphones or laptops in December, compared with 50.9 million who tuned into the BBC, according to the official ratings agency Barb.
The BBC’s outgoing director general, Tim Davie, said the partnership would help the corporation to “connect with audiences in new ways”. He said: “We’re building from a strong start and this takes us to the next level, with bold homegrown content in formats audiences want on YouTube and an unprecedented training programme to upskill the next generation of YouTube creators from across the UK.”
The YouTube content will also be available on iPlayer and BBC Sounds. A small number of existing programmes will be available on YouTube, but the BBC said its strategy would not be to put all its content on the site.
…The BBC partnership with YouTube is the latest deal in the sector as traditional TV companies join forces with big tech. Netflix reached an agreement with the French commercial broadcaster TF1 last year to show linear TV on its streaming platform.
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US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains • Nature
Max Kozlov, Jeff Tollefson and Dan Garisto:
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MMore than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research. Proposed budget cuts of 35% — amounting to US$32 billion.
These are just a few of the ways in which Donald Trump has downsized and disrupted US science since returning to the White House last January. As his administration seeks to reshape US research and development, it has substantially scaled back and restricted what science the country pursues and the workforce that runs the federal scientific enterprise.
A year into Trump’s second presidential term, Nature presents a series of graphics that reveal the impact of his administration on science.
In an unprecedented move, officials began terminating already-funded grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in February, and later at the National Science Foundation (NSF), two of the largest public supporters of scientific research in the United States. A total of 5,844 NIH grants and 1,996 NSF grants were cancelled or suspended.
The Trump administration disproportionally cancelled or froze projects on topics it disfavours, such as misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, infectious diseases and research on people from under-represented ethnic and gender groups, which it has called discriminatory and unscientific.
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There’s a sort of block representation of the cuts that have been made, but really you can just imagine something like Los Angeles after the wildfires last year. It’s just a devastation of what had been a very stable ecosystem. In years to come, the damage from this will start to show, particularly in comparison to China.
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Going Founder Mode on cancer • The Century of Biology
Elliot Hershberg:
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Sid [Sijbrandij] developed a complex information processing system (GitLab’s unique operating culture) to scale the development of a complex information product (GitLab) built for creating and maintaining complex information products (software).
It’s safe to say that Sid really likes information. But on November 18, 2022, [aged 45] Sid got information that absolutely nobody wants. He had cancer.
Sid had a lot to lose. At this point, he was a self-made billionaire entrepreneur who was happily married to his life partner of over 25 years. Suddenly, the six centimeter mass growing out of his upper spine threatened to end all of that.
Throughout 2023, Sid dutifully underwent a brutal care regimen that he can only describe in retrospect as “devastating.” His tumorous vertebrae was surgically removed and his spine was fused with a titanium frame. He underwent rounds of radiation and chemotherapy so intense that four blood transfusions were required to keep him alive.
Despite all of this, his cancer resurfaced in 2024. Sid says the message he got from his physician was basically, “You’re done with standard of care, maybe there is a trial somewhere, good luck!” But that wasn’t going to cut it for Sid. He wanted to live.
So he decided to go founder mode on his cancer.
Over the last two years, Sid has assembled a veritable SWAT team to navigate—and in many cases create—his care journey.
Many of the ingredients resemble GitLab.
The top layer of his care stack is a system of intensive information gathering and documentation that is not dissimilar from the GitLab Handbook. In a massive Google Doc entitled “Sid Health Notes,” he and his team compile detailed entries for every medical interaction or meeting with a cancer researcher or oncology company they take. The document has grown to over 1,000 pages for just 2025.
Hyperlinked within this Doc is the next part of the stack, which Sid refers to as “maximal diagnostics.” The raw data for every lab test, scan, and genomic sequencing result is meticulously stored. And there are a lot of results. “I’m doing every diagnostic I can get my hands on, and doing them often,” he says.
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This is a book chapter-length read, but the general point is: people like this give you a roadmap for what might become routine in the future, or at least might show shortcuts for the future.
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The real reason for the drop in fentanyl overdoses • The Atlantic
Charles Fain Lehman:
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sometime in 2023, something miraculous happened: death rates [from fentanyl overdoses] started dropping. In Canada, opioid-overdose deaths declined 17% in 2024, then continued falling sharply in the first six months of 2025 (the most recent months for which data are available). In America, preliminary data indicate that total drug deaths fell from their peak of just shy of 113,000 in the year ending August 2023 to about 73,000 in the year ending August 2025.
Although the numbers are still too high, the public-health community has responded to the decrease with jubilation—and confusion. Overdoses had been rising inexorably for 20 years. What changed?
A new paper, published earlier this month by a group of drug-policy scholars in the journal Science, presents a novel theory. The paper’s authors attribute the reversal not to any American or Canadian policy, but to a sudden fentanyl “drought,” which they say may have its causes not in North America, but in China.
…Using data from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the paper’s authors observe that when overdose deaths began falling in mid-2023, the measured purity of fentanyl sold on the street began falling roughly in tandem. By the end of 2024, the data show, both overdose deaths and powder purity had fallen by about 50%—a dramatic concurrence.
…The paper’s authors suggest that the answer may be related to a 2023 China crackdown on fentanyl-precursor chemicals and the online platforms that sold them, itself following a summit between President Biden and Xi Jinping. That crackdown in turn may have made it harder for Mexican producers, who usually source their precursors from the Chinese gray market, to manufacture the drug. But that’s more of a speculation than a definitive answer, Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of the paper, told me.
“I’m much more comfortable with the idea that supply has become less abundant,” Caulkins said, adding that he’s fundamentally “puzzled what it was that could have produced such a long-lasting reduction.”
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(Gift link.)
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iOS 27: Apple to revamp Siri as chatbot built in to iPhone and Mac to fend off OpenAI • Bloomberg
Mark Gurman:
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Apple Inc. plans to revamp Siri later this year by turning the digital assistant into the company’s first artificial intelligence chatbot, thrusting the iPhone maker into a generative AI race dominated by OpenAI and Google.
The chatbot — code-named Campos — will be embedded deeply into the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems and replace the current Siri interface, according to people familiar with the plan. Users will be able to summon the new service the same way they open Siri now, by speaking the “Siri” command or holding down the side button on their iPhone or iPad.
The new approach will go well beyond the abilities of the current Siri — or even a long-promised update that’s coming earlier in 2026. Today’s Siri lacks a chat-like feel and the back-and-forth conversational abilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.
The feature is a central piece of Apple’s turnaround plan for the AI market, where it has lagged behind Silicon Valley peers. The Apple Intelligence platform had a rocky rollout in 2024, with features that were underwhelming or slow to arrive.
Shares of Apple gained on the chatbot news, climbing as much as 1.7% to a session high of $250.83. Google parent Alphabet Inc., which is supplying the underlying technology for the project, was up 2.6% to $330.32 as of 2:54 p.m. in New York.
The previously promised, non-chatbot update to Siri — retaining the current interface — is planned for iOS 26.4, due in the coming months. The idea behind that upgrade is to add features unveiled in 2024, including the ability to analyze on-screen content and tap into personal data. It also will be better at searching the web.
The chatbot capabilities will come later in the year, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private.
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So when you say “revamp” what you mean is “use Google Gemini”? It would be nice to know if any of the old Siri will be kept, or if it’s going to be taken on a ride into the mountains. (Perhaps in the manner of John Gruber’s June 2007 “An Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal Interface Theme Shows Up for the WWDC Preview Build of Mac OS X Leopard“.)
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Apple developing AirTag-sized AI pin with dual cameras • MacRumors
Juli Clover:
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Apple is working on a small, wearable AI pin equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker, and microphones, reports The Information. If it actually launches, the AI pin will likely run the new Siri chatbot that Apple plans to unveil in iOS 27.
The pin is said to be similar in size to an AirTag, with a thin, flat, circular disc shape. It has an aluminum and glass shell, and two cameras at the front. There is a standard lens and a wide-angle lens that are meant to capture photos and videos, while three microphones are designed to pick up sound around the wearer. An included speaker allows the pin to play audio, and there is a physical control button along one edge. The device is able to wirelessly charge like an Apple Watch.
Apple wants the final version of the pin to be about the same size as an AirTag , but it will be slightly thicker. Currently, there is no built-in attachment method, but that could change later in development.
The Information says it is not clear if Apple plans to sell the pin on its own or bundle it with future smart glasses or other devices, but the physical button and built-in cameras, speakers, and microphones suggest that it can operate independently.
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Bet it won’t, though. It’ll be tied to an iPhone.
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The Vision Pro slam dunk • Spyglass
MG Siegler on the Vision Pro showing a Lakers basketball game live (or recorded for those outside the franchise area):
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While I obviously didn’t watch it live, Jason Snell did, and in his thoughts for Six Colors on the experience, he described it as “surprisingly… normal?” I agree with that. After the initial “wow” factor wore off of being transported to Los Angeles with Crypto.com Arena wrapped around you, it felt like… you were watching a basketball game. It wasn’t exactly like watching it on TV, but it also wasn’t exactly like watching it in person. It was sort of… in-between.
Depending on the vantage point, it sort of veered between the television experience and the in-person experience. And that was the most jarring element of watching it – Apple kept cutting between those vantage points. You had no say over the matter, you were just zoomed from one area of the arena to another on the whim of the producers. It wasn’t as jarring as it was in those aforementioned short highlight clips of other sporting events because you did get to linger longer in each spot given that the entire experience (meaning, the entire game) was just over two-hours long. Still, during the actual game, the cuts between cameras behind the basket depending on where the action was happening was… weird. You were forced to reorient yourself constantly on the fly. I sort of got used to it as the game went on, but it’s still felt a bit like a brain teaser – especially the cuts between the same perspective just on opposite ends of the court.
Ben Thompson clearly hated this aspect, as his fun Stratechery rant going after Apple for not understanding their product makes clear. All he wanted was a single vantage point, ideally court side, where you were planted and never left. That would, he argues, be actually immersive. Because it wouldn’t make you do the constant mental calisthenics I describe above. I don’t disagree, but I also don’t think that’s all Apple should do. I think that should be an option.
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I linked to Thompson’s rant last week, but the thoughts about this have bounced through the podcast and blogosphere, and a unifying opinion is that Apple’s production team here doesn’t understand what it has. Immersive is different; don’t throw people about. It’s peculiar that this hasn’t been learnt through other VR headsets; have none of them tried to show live events? If I could watch tennis immersively (from the back, absolutely not side, of the court), I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
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Identity and money: a case study • David GW Birch
David G.W. Birch:
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Ireland experienced three major bank strikes between 1966 and 1976, most famously in 1970, when most commercial banks shut for about six months yet everyday economic activity continued using cheques and informal credit in place of cash. The coordinated industrial disputes shut Ireland’s main “associated banks”, which held almost two-thirds of deposits, so their closure effectively froze most current accounts and disrupted normal cash withdrawals and cheque clearing. Each time the retail banks were closed down the public were left with the notes and coins in their pockets and nothing more.
These episodes are now used as natural experiments to study how economies function when formal banking and cash access are severely disrupted. The lessons learned from these episodes in Irish history, which illustrate how payment systems, credit, and output might respond when access to banks is restricted can inform our thinking about financial resilience and crisis planning today.
Since people could not obtain cash, they developed their own currency substitutes: people began to accept cheques and IOUs directly from each other, and these instruments began to circulate. Antoin Murphy, who wrote a definitive case study on the subject, noted that one of the key reasons why this ‘personalised credit system’ could substitute for cash was the local nature of the circulation.
When people ran out of cash and then ran out of cheques, they made their own money. Official bank cheques at the time incorporated a government stamp (which was in effect a payment tax). So people made their own cheques on anything they had to hand and stuck a postage stamp on it. Ireland was a much more rural economy back then, so the principal clearing houses for this bottom up payments system were the pubs. Cigarette packets suddenly became bills of exchange, as patrons emptied them out, wrote an IOU on the inside, added a stamp and handed it across the counter to the acquiescent publican.
When the strikes ended and the banks reopened, the outstanding IOUs were settled. The system held. The ability of Irish publicans to assess the creditworthiness of their patrons, a skill that would put a turbocharged ChatGPT to shame, was vindicated and most of the IOUs, in whatever form, were honoured.
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I’m very interested by the implications of “most” in that last sentence, and feel that there would be some fascinating stories embedded in it. The linked paper (in the text) has a longer examination of what happened during the strike, but not what happened when it ended and the “most” – but not all? – were redeemed.
It also makes you realise that without banks essentially providing a clearing function, economies are in big trouble. How do you buy a house? Or even a car? How do you show you’ve got enough liquidity, now or in the future, to do it?
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 