‘Autarky and nostalgia aren’t cure-alls’

‘Confession of a cheap imports enjoyer’

Jack Butler at The Wall Street Journal

Searching the “internet for tables, chairs, futons and bookshelves,” there are “great options. Almost none of them were made in the U.S. Many came from China,” says Jack Butler. It’s “okay that the U.S. isn’t a powerhouse producer of faux-marble tables and adjustable futons,” because it “does other things — high-end manufacturing, energy production, design — and it does them better than anyone else.” There are “better jobs for Americans than making cheap tables and chairs.”

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‘Benin’s real coup already happened under President Talon’

Tafi Mhaka at Al Jazeera

The attempted coup in Benin was the “visible peak of a deeper political crisis years in the making,” says Tafi Mhaka. In its “aftermath, order was restored, but not legitimacy.” Benin’s “real coup — the systematic overthrow of its democracy — had already occurred.” All the “attempted takeover did was to lay bare a political system that had already been undermined from within,” as “any illusion of democracy in the country disappeared.”

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‘Singapore’s latest antisocial scourge is pickleball’

Owen Walker at the Financial Times

There has been an “active pickleball-playing community in Singapore for at least three decades, but for years it was known as an old man’s game,” says Owen Walker. It has “become a lightning rod issue, pitching enthusiastic picklers against neighbors driven mad by the sport’s relentless ‘pock, pock, pock’ soundtrack.” In “entrepreneurial Singapore, the dilemma has prompted some to spot a business opportunity.” Other “cities enduring the same public backlash against the sport’s growing popularity could take note.”

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‘Netflix has three huge new problems with its Warner Bros takeover: Paramount, TikTok and Trump’

James Moore at The Independent

Netflix and Warner Bros. would be the “media merger of the century, so naturally, Donald Trump is sticking his oar in,” says James Moore. But the “deal is motivated as much by fear as it is Netflix’s desire to create an unstoppable media and entertainment supertanker.” Just as “Netflix revolutionized the viewing habits of the Millennials, and Gen X while we’re at it, so is it looking nervously at the Zoomers and Gen Alpha rapidly coming up behind them.”

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