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From schools to potholes: huge expansion of AI in public sector

Booth UK technology editor

The Guardian 13 Jan 2025 Starmer to announce massive investment in AI, despite fear of effects

Artificial intelligence will be used for everything from spotting potholes to freeing up teachers to teach under a big expansion of the technology in the public sector to be revealed today.

Keir Starmer will launch the sweeping plan to increase twentyfold the amount of artificial intelligence (AI) computing power under public control over the next five years, despite widespread fear about the technology’s effects.

Labour’s plan to “unleash” AI, “mainlining it into the veins of the nation”, includes a personal pledge from the prime minister to make Britain “the world leader” in a sector that has been transformed by a series of significant breakthroughs in the last three years.

The plan features a potentially controversial scheme to unlock public data to help fuel the growth of AI businesses.

This includes anonymised NHS data, which will be available for “researchers and innovators” to train their AI models.

The government insists there would be “strong privacy-preserving safeguards” and the data would never be owned by private companies.

Ministers believe AI can help tackle Britain’s anaemic economic growth and deliver, according to its own forecasts, an economic boost rising to up to £470bn over the next decade.

The action plan represents a shift in tone from the government, which had previously been focused on tackling the most serious “frontier” risks from AI, relating to dangers like cybersecurity, disinformation and bioweapons.

Technology companies including Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI welcomed the plan as Starmer said “the AI industry needs a government that is on their side”.

Regulators will be told to “actively support innovation”, setting up a potential clash with people who believe regulators’ primary role should be to protect the public from harm.

But experts in AI’s effects on society, jobs and the environment urged caution.

The three words most associated with AI by the public are “robot”, “scary” and “worried”, according to government research last month.

The prime minister is also aiming to accelerate investment in new miniature nuclear

reactors to power the energy-hungry technology.

Susie Alegre, a barrister specialising in technology and human rights, cited the Post Office scandal “as a reminder of the dangers of putting too much faith in technology without the resources for effective accountability”.

She said “any plan for Britain’s future with AI needs to look at realworld consequences for people and the planet and cannot afford to look away from uncomfortable truths”.

Starmer has instructed every member of his cabinet to make AI adoption a top priority and said: “Artificial intelligence will drive incredible change in our country. From teachers personalising lessons, to supporting small businesses with their record-keeping, to speeding up planning applications, it has the potential to transform the lives of working people.

“But the AI industry needs a government that is on their side, one that won’t sit back and let opportunities slip through its fingers. In a world of fierce competition, we cannot stand by. We must move fast and take action to win the global race.”

The US currently leads the world in AI ahead of China, which is well ahead of the UK in third place, according to rankings from Stanford University.

Under the government’s 50-point AI action plan, an area of Oxfordshire near the headquarters of the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Culham will be designated the first AI growth zone. It will have fast-tracked planning arrangements for data centres as the government seeks to reposition Britain as a place where AI innovators believe they can build trillion-pound companies. Further zones will be created in as-yet-unnamed “deindustrialised areas of the country with access to power”.

Multibillion-pound contracts will be signed to build the new public “compute” capacity – the microchips, processing units, memory and cabling that physically enable AI. There will also be a new “supercomputer”, which the government boasts will have sufficient AI power to play itself at chess half a million times a second.

Sounding a note of caution, the Ada Lovelace Institute called for “a roadmap for addressing broader AI harms”, and stressed that piloting AI in the public sector “will have realworld impacts on people”.

Gaia Marcus, director of the research institute, said it wanted to know how Whitehall would “implement these systems safely as they move at pace” to maintain public trust.

The government confirmed an initiative to gather data held by the public sector in a new National Data Library to “support AI research and innovation”. It did not specify what data would be made available to private companies, but said it would be done “responsibly, securely and ethically”.

The science and technology secretary, Peter Kyle, commissioned the British tech investor Matt Clifford to draw up the AI opportunities action plan nearly six months ago.

At the time the government cited the possibility of 1.5% a year productivity gain for the economy if AI could increase efficiencies for workers.

But there are also fears that it could lead to widespread unemployment, particularly in professional occupations associated with more clerical work and across finance, law and business management roles.

Kyle will lead a new AI energy council with the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, to accelerate investment in sources such as renewables and small modular nuclear reactors, which are being pioneered to fuel AI systems.

Worldwide, some campaigners have raised safety fears about the technology and there are concerns that they could generate greater quantities of radioactive waste.

The overall computing capacity boost will cost taxpayers billions of pounds over the next five years, the Guardian understands. More details of funding are expected in the 2025 spending review. The investment is separate to £14bn announced by private companies to build vast data centres in places such as Loughton in Essex and on the site of a former car engine plant in south Wales.

The news comes after reports Rachel Reeves was considering steep cuts to public services to help repair the government’s finances. The chancellor has told colleagues in the cabinet to be “ruthless” in finding areas for savings, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

The shadow secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Alan Mak, said: “Labour’s plan will not support the UK to become a tech and science superpower. They’re delivering analogue government in a digital age ... AI does have the potential to transform public services, but Labour’s economic mismanagement and uninspiring plan will mean Britain is left behind.”

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2025/01/13
Infoman

China is starting to win the industrial war

D. Atkinson

The New York Times (International Edition) 13 Jan 2025 The country’s goal is to damage the U.S. economy so that it can become the world’s pre-eminent power.

Credit goes to Donald Trump for alerting the world to the dangers posed by China, particularly its efforts to overtake the United States as the world’s most advanced economy. But neither his first administration nor President Biden’s has done enough to combat China’s incursions, which have cost America millions of manufacturing jobs and the closure of tens of thousands of factories, according to data compiled by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the nonpartisan technology policy think tank I lead. That’s because policymakers on both sides of the aisle are only slowly waking up to the reality: We are already in the middle of an industrial war.

Lawmakers need to understand that for China, a desire to make money — the fundamental driver of trade and of capitalism — is secondary. Its primary goal is to damage America’s economy and pave the way for China to become the world’s pre-eminent power. Countries like China are power traders, called such because their policies and programs are designed not only to advance their power but also to degrade their adversaries’, even at a financial cost to their own economies.

China’s rate of progress in production and innovation across a wide range of industries is striking. If our policymakers don’t work fast and smart enough, they will put at risk America’s workers, economy and place in the world.

History has seen other campaigns like this. From the late 1800s to World War II, Germany illustrated how trade could be weaponized into “an instrument of power, of pressure and even of conquest,” wrote the development economist Albert O. Hirschman.

Like China, Germany mostly focused on importing goods needed for its war machine, redirected trade to friendly or subject nations and sought to control oceanic trade routes, all in an effort to limit development of its adversaries. Like China, the German government kept its currency undervalued (making its goods relatively cheaper for consumers in other countries), leveraged the use of tariffs and subsidized its exports to bolster its position in industry goods such as steel, chemicals and machinery.

Like China, German companies sold goods for less than the cost of manufacture to wrest market share from overseas rivals. Like China, Germans engaged in systemic industrial espionage. Engineers were sent overseas with the explicit order to return with trade secrets for German companies.

There was also the theft of intellectual property, including chemical formulas and machinery plans to give German manufacturers a leg up. “Trademarks are to be pirated,” declared a 1919 New York Tribune article on Germany — a declaration that could have been written today about China.

In short, Germany sought to gain technoeconomic power, especially over its European adversaries, then use that power to dominate the continent. As the French economist Henri Hauser wrote in 1915, “Germany made war in the midst of peace with the instruments of peace. Dumping, export subsidies, import certificates, measures with respect to emigration, etc., all of these various methods were used not as normal methods of economic activity but as means to suffocate, to crush and terrorize Germany’s adversaries.”

For a while, it was successful. Without American intervention in World War I and II, it is quite possible that Germany would have taken over much of Europe, in large part because its industries and hence military were so much stronger than those of other European nations. While America’s industrial revolution continued through the early 20th century, insulated by high tariffs initiated by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the German trade shock stopped many Eastern and Southern European economies from fully industrializing and spurred the deindustrialization of nations like Britain. Many have not fully recovered.

It seems all the trade lessons from that fraught period have been forgotten. In the postwar glow of American dominance, U.S. legislators and business leaders embraced an idealistic vision of an increasingly wealthy free world. Countries would embrace capitalism and, thus incentivized by selfinterest, would trade fairly and freely with the United States, enriching their citizens and naturally leading to a democratic order. Because American companies were so strong, this was seen as a path to expanded U.S. global economic leadership.

As we now know, that vision was never fully realized. Today it is China that is weaponizing its roughly $18 trillion economy, using a vast array of policy tools to distort trade and increase its relative economic power. Wielding such weaponry as export financing and subsidies — almost four times as much as a share of G.D.P. as the United States, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies — China has already gained global leadership in telecommunications equipment, effectively destroying North America’s industry. It has done the same in solar panels and commercial drones and is close in high-speed rail and batteries.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that in 10 advanced industries — including semiconductors, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space and chemicals — China is making progress toward the global leading edge of innovation, backed by extensive intellectual property theft, enormous government subsidies and closed domestic markets. And in some industries, such as electric vehicles and commercial nuclear power, Chinese companies now lead.

China installed more industrial robots last year and has more nuclear power plants under construction than the rest of the world combined. It spent almost $50 billion on subsidies to catch up on semiconductors before the U.S. Congress responded with the CHIPs Act. It is seeking to flood the world with electric vehicles, as well as gasoline-powered models. It has spent as much as three times as much on semiconductor subsidies as the United States. And it is spending billions of dollars more on the development of quantum technology than any other government, according to an analysis

by the consulting firm McKinsey. Sales of the C919 by COMAC (a state-owned company) are on pace to make it the top-selling jet aircraft in the world this year, contributing even further to Airbus’s and Boeing's travails. And China accounts for 44 percent of the world’s chemical production, according to my research.

China has demonstrated time and again a willingness to lose money to gain power — decisions that would make little sense under the regular dynamics of profit and loss. Look at the LCD display and OLED display industry (high-definition electronic screens), which are critical to smartphone and television production. In 2023, China’s leading producer, BOE, received more in government subsidies ($532 million) than the company generated in profits. That could explain why, for displays like those used in smartphones, Chinese suppliers are charging just $20 to $23 while rivals charge more than twice that. This is why China accounted for 72 percent of LCD production in 2024, up from virtually nothing in 2004.

U.S. policymakers are starting to wake up. Rush Doshi, formerly the deputy senior director for China on the National Security Council under Mr. Biden, titled his 2021 book “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.” And Marco Rubio, the former chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, issued a report concluding that China was doing more than “breaking the rules” to dominate highvalue industrial sectors. This helps explain why, despite a highly polarized political climate, Congress managed to pass the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested billions of dollars to support new semiconductor factories in the United States. Nothing promotes unity like a common and frightening enemy.

But these measures are not enough. America must expand its competitiveness in a range of other industries — including aerospace, biopharmaceuticals and machinery — and lead in emerging ones such as A.I., quantum computing and nuclear fusion.

Instead of across-the-board tariffs, the new administration should take a page from Ronald Reagan and negotiate a major decline in the value of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis its trading partners, and if that does not work, the Treasury Department should take unilateral steps to drive down the value of the dollar. That would make American exports less expensive and imports pricier without the risk of trade retaliation. Congress should also update U.S. trade law, such as by eliminating the requirement of harm to U.S. companies from foreign unfair trade practices before remedies can be enacted.

America needs closer collaboration among allied nations to push back on China’s predatory power trade practices, including increasing foreign aid to help developing nations avoid their dependency on Beijing. And the United States needs to take advantage of its being a magnet for the best and the brightest globally by making it much easier for scientists and engineers to work here.

America should respect free-trade ideals and hold them dear. But that should not blind us to the harsh reality that the world now is distorted by its strongest power trader. The answer is not deglobalization or protectionism. America depends on too many industries — like aerospace, biopharmaceuticals, software and semiconductors — that cannot thrive without access to global markets.

And it is not holding on naïvely to the hopes that free trade could yet prevail if the United States simply ended the trade war. China will not end its power trade regime until it has gained dominance across a wide range of advanced industries. Rather, we need to understand the adversary we face and respond bravely, strategically and expeditiously.

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2025/01/13
Infoman

China is starting to win the industrial war

D. Atkinson

The New York Times (International Edition) 13 Jan 2025 The country’s goal is to damage the U.S. economy so that it can become the world’s pre-eminent power.

Credit goes to Donald Trump for alerting the world to the dangers posed by China, particularly its efforts to overtake the United States as the world’s most advanced economy. But neither his first administration nor President Biden’s has done enough to combat China’s incursions, which have cost America millions of manufacturing jobs and the closure of tens of thousands of factories, according to data compiled by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the nonpartisan technology policy think tank I lead. That’s because policymakers on both sides of the aisle are only slowly waking up to the reality: We are already in the middle of an industrial war.

Lawmakers need to understand that for China, a desire to make money — the fundamental driver of trade and of capitalism — is secondary. Its primary goal is to damage America’s economy and pave the way for China to become the world’s pre-eminent power. Countries like China are power traders, called such because their policies and programs are designed not only to advance their power but also to degrade their adversaries’, even at a financial cost to their own economies.

China’s rate of progress in production and innovation across a wide range of industries is striking. If our policymakers don’t work fast and smart enough, they will put at risk America’s workers, economy and place in the world.

History has seen other campaigns like this. From the late 1800s to World War II, Germany illustrated how trade could be weaponized into “an instrument of power, of pressure and even of conquest,” wrote the development economist Albert O. Hirschman.

Like China, Germany mostly focused on importing goods needed for its war machine, redirected trade to friendly or subject nations and sought to control oceanic trade routes, all in an effort to limit development of its adversaries. Like China, the German government kept its currency undervalued (making its goods relatively cheaper for consumers in other countries), leveraged the use of tariffs and subsidized its exports to bolster its position in industry goods such as steel, chemicals and machinery.

Like China, German companies sold goods for less than the cost of manufacture to wrest market share from overseas rivals. Like China, Germans engaged in systemic industrial espionage. Engineers were sent overseas with the explicit order to return with trade secrets for German companies.

There was also the theft of intellectual property, including chemical formulas and machinery plans to give German manufacturers a leg up. “Trademarks are to be pirated,” declared a 1919 New York Tribune article on Germany — a declaration that could have been written today about China.

In short, Germany sought to gain technoeconomic power, especially over its European adversaries, then use that power to dominate the continent. As the French economist Henri Hauser wrote in 1915, “Germany made war in the midst of peace with the instruments of peace. Dumping, export subsidies, import certificates, measures with respect to emigration, etc., all of these various methods were used not as normal methods of economic activity but as means to suffocate, to crush and terrorize Germany’s adversaries.”

For a while, it was successful. Without American intervention in World War I and II, it is quite possible that Germany would have taken over much of Europe, in large part because its industries and hence military were so much stronger than those of other European nations. While America’s industrial revolution continued through the early 20th century, insulated by high tariffs initiated by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the German trade shock stopped many Eastern and Southern European economies from fully industrializing and spurred the deindustrialization of nations like Britain. Many have not fully recovered.

It seems all the trade lessons from that fraught period have been forgotten. In the postwar glow of American dominance, U.S. legislators and business leaders embraced an idealistic vision of an increasingly wealthy free world. Countries would embrace capitalism and, thus incentivized by selfinterest, would trade fairly and freely with the United States, enriching their citizens and naturally leading to a democratic order. Because American companies were so strong, this was seen as a path to expanded U.S. global economic leadership.

As we now know, that vision was never fully realized. Today it is China that is weaponizing its roughly $18 trillion economy, using a vast array of policy tools to distort trade and increase its relative economic power. Wielding such weaponry as export financing and subsidies — almost four times as much as a share of G.D.P. as the United States, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies — China has already gained global leadership in telecommunications equipment, effectively destroying North America’s industry. It has done the same in solar panels and commercial drones and is close in high-speed rail and batteries.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that in 10 advanced industries — including semiconductors, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space and chemicals — China is making progress toward the global leading edge of innovation, backed by extensive intellectual property theft, enormous government subsidies and closed domestic markets. And in some industries, such as electric vehicles and commercial nuclear power, Chinese companies now lead.

China installed more industrial robots last year and has more nuclear power plants under construction than the rest of the world combined. It spent almost $50 billion on subsidies to catch up on semiconductors before the U.S. Congress responded with the CHIPs Act. It is seeking to flood the world with electric vehicles, as well as gasoline-powered models. It has spent as much as three times as much on semiconductor subsidies as the United States. And it is spending billions of dollars more on the development of quantum technology than any other government, according to an analysis

by the consulting firm McKinsey. Sales of the C919 by COMAC (a state-owned company) are on pace to make it the top-selling jet aircraft in the world this year, contributing even further to Airbus’s and Boeing's travails. And China accounts for 44 percent of the world’s chemical production, according to my research.

China has demonstrated time and again a willingness to lose money to gain power — decisions that would make little sense under the regular dynamics of profit and loss. Look at the LCD display and OLED display industry (high-definition electronic screens), which are critical to smartphone and television production. In 2023, China’s leading producer, BOE, received more in government subsidies ($532 million) than the company generated in profits. That could explain why, for displays like those used in smartphones, Chinese suppliers are charging just $20 to $23 while rivals charge more than twice that. This is why China accounted for 72 percent of LCD production in 2024, up from virtually nothing in 2004.

U.S. policymakers are starting to wake up. Rush Doshi, formerly the deputy senior director for China on the National Security Council under Mr. Biden, titled his 2021 book “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.” And Marco Rubio, the former chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, issued a report concluding that China was doing more than “breaking the rules” to dominate highvalue industrial sectors. This helps explain why, despite a highly polarized political climate, Congress managed to pass the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested billions of dollars to support new semiconductor factories in the United States. Nothing promotes unity like a common and frightening enemy.

But these measures are not enough. America must expand its competitiveness in a range of other industries — including aerospace, biopharmaceuticals and machinery — and lead in emerging ones such as A.I., quantum computing and nuclear fusion.

Instead of across-the-board tariffs, the new administration should take a page from Ronald Reagan and negotiate a major decline in the value of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis its trading partners, and if that does not work, the Treasury Department should take unilateral steps to drive down the value of the dollar. That would make American exports less expensive and imports pricier without the risk of trade retaliation. Congress should also update U.S. trade law, such as by eliminating the requirement of harm to U.S. companies from foreign unfair trade practices before remedies can be enacted.

America needs closer collaboration among allied nations to push back on China’s predatory power trade practices, including increasing foreign aid to help developing nations avoid their dependency on Beijing. And the United States needs to take advantage of its being a magnet for the best and the brightest globally by making it much easier for scientists and engineers to work here.

America should respect free-trade ideals and hold them dear. But that should not blind us to the harsh reality that the world now is distorted by its strongest power trader. The answer is not deglobalization or protectionism. America depends on too many industries — like aerospace, biopharmaceuticals, software and semiconductors — that cannot thrive without access to global markets.

And it is not holding on naïvely to the hopes that free trade could yet prevail if the United States simply ended the trade war. China will not end its power trade regime until it has gained dominance across a wide range of advanced industries. Rather, we need to understand the adversary we face and respond bravely, strategically and expeditiously.

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2025/01/13
Infoman

Single bus fare cap increases by 50% to £3 today in much of England

Media

The Guardian 01 Jan 2025

Millions of bus passengers in England have been hit by an increase in single fares from £2 to £3.

The government has increased the fare cap from today for the first time since it was launched for most bus routes two years ago. It will remain at £3 until the end of 2025.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said the increase would enable “potential savings of up to 80% on some routes”. Fares that would be less than £3 without the cap, such as many in urban areas, are permitted to rise by no more than inflation.

Silviya Barrett, from the lobby group Campaign for Better Transport, said: “This is a significant increase that will be a costly start to 2025 for many people. Buses are our most used form of public transport so they need to be affordable.”

The increase was announced by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in the budget in October. Analysis commissioned by the DfT found keeping the cap at £2 was “not financially sustainable for the taxpayer” and “offered poor value for money”, a source said.

Local transport authorities have the power to keep the cap lower in their areas if they subsidise it themselves or fund their own local schemes. The Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, previously announced that single fares in the region would remain capped at £2 for 2025, subject to a mid-year review. In West Yorkshire, the cap will remain £2 until the end of March, after which it will rise to £2.50.

The DfT said that without a cap a journey from Leeds to Scarborough would cost £12, for example, and between Hull and York £5.50. The department said it was providing more than £150m to fund the cap in 2025. This was in addition to £955m announced in the budget to support bus services until 2026.

The local transport minister, Simon Lightwood, said: “Buses are vital to help people get to work, the doctor, or see their friends and family – they boost growth, support communities, and provide opportunity. That’s why we’re stepping in to make sure fares are capped at the lowest point possible.”

Figures show the total distance travelled by buses in England in the year to the end of March was 1.01bn miles. That was down 11% from 1.14bn miles in 2019-20, before the coronavirus crisis, and 22% down from 1.29bn miles a decade earlier.

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2025/01/13
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Teenage girls in Britain outdrink boys by widest margin in Europe, study suggests

Dugan

The Guardian 01 Jan 2025

Teenage girls are outdrinking their male peers in the UK at a greater rate than any other European country, according to research.

More than a third of 15-year-old girls in Britain report getting repeatedly drunk, compared with fewer than a quarter of boys the same age, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found.

While a higher proportion of girls in Denmark, Hungary and Italy admitted regular drunkenness than those in Britain, their rates were much closer to those of boys. For example, in Denmark 43% of girls admitted to getting drunk repeatedly, compared with 46% of boys. It is unclear why teenage girls appear more susceptible than boys to getting drunk, but it could be connected to marketing and trends among adults.

British women have the highest rate of binge drinking in the world, with more than a quarter consuming at least six alcoholic drinks in a single session at least once a month. British men are still much more likely to binge drink, with 45% having a boozy night at least once a month.

Dr Anna Symonds, a clinical psychologist who works with young people, said she thought anxiety and low mood might be a factor in the findings. Britain scored lowest for life satisfaction among teenagers in Europe in research published last year, with girls particularly affected.

This “happiness recession” could be having an effect on teenage drinking habits, according to Symonds. She said it was possible there was a link “between girls experiencing higher levels of anxiety and social anxiety and using alcohol that way”. “Perhaps they’re using it to manage their emotions and their psychological functioning at the loss of any other strategies … People drink when they feel low to help themselves feel better. Alcohol is a depressant, but teens don’t know that.”

The research relied on participants to be honest about whether they were drunk or not. British boys may still have indulged in binge drinking but pretended in the survey that they had a higher tolerance for alcohol.

Prof Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, told the Times: “Higher rates of drinking among girls is a real cause for concern, especially given the recent upturn in alcohol-related liver disease that we have seen among women. Although it is unclear what exactly is driving this trend, shifting cultural norms and shrewdly targeted marketing campaigns are likely to play a role.”

The OECD noted a downward trend for adolescent alcohol consumption. On average, 23% of 15-year-old boys in Europe report repeated drunkenness in the latest data from 2022, down from 39% in 2002. Among girls, the rate fell from 30% to 23%.

The OECD said: “Repeated drunkenness, defined as being drunk on at least two occasions during their lifetime, continues to be common among adolescents in Europe … Early drinking initiation and getting drunk repeatedly are of concern.”

Dr Richard Piper, the chief executive of Alcohol Change UK, said the research highlighted an “urgent need for change”.

“Women in particular have been heavily targeted by alcohol companies in recent years to drink more alcohol,” he said. “This creates an environment which glamorises and normalises alcohol, pretending it is essential to our day-to-day lives.”

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2025/01/13
Infoman

Refined chaos

Jenkins

Frankie 01 Jan 2025 OUR COVER ARTIST, IZZY LAWRENCE, KEEPS HER FAST-PACED CREATIVE MIND IN CHECK BY EMPLOYING DISCIPLINE AND MINIMALISM.

Every morning, while looking out at the ocean from her home in Newcastle/mulubinba, artist Izzy Lawrence gets a burst of creative inspiration. “If I see something that has a particularly good glean or glisten then I feel urged to draw pretty instantly. At the moment, I’ve been looking at water every day, and so I’m just imagining scenes with water, which is why the timing of the frankie cover was perfect.”

For our summer bumper issue cover, Izzy has created an original poolside artwork in her signature, ultra-dreamy style. To consistently evoke that style – which almost feels like ’70s luxury – Izzy is extremely disciplined in her use of colour, light and shadow. “I have a palette of about 10 colours that I always go back to – a couple of dark shades, a couple of mid shades and a couple of highlight shades,” she says. “Having this limited palette has been really useful for me in creating my work, because sometimes I need to draw something and the colour that I need isn’t in my palette, and so I have to be creative about which colour is going to fit the best. “Which colour makes the highlight on this object feel right?

Is it going to be a baby blue? Or is it going to be a light orange? Or is it going to be a light pink?”

Izzy learnt this restrictive technique from her beloved high-school art teacher. “She was the one who first taught me about light and shadow, and made me realise that the colour doesn’t tend to be too important,” she says. “Bear with me for a second, because it is a little abstract, but I love that you can change the colours around. You can make them completely opposite and an object can still be deeply recognisable and sometimes feel more familiar, because sometimes the colour of something in a memory is actually different to the literal colour you imagine. In your head, something like an apple is red, but in a memory, maybe you’re looking at it at night-time, and that makes it purple … I think altering colours often creates a more emotional response within people.”

These days Izzy predominantly works in digital illustration, because it allows her to break the traditional rules of painting.

For example, when painting you typically use light colours first and build up to the dark colours, but by working digitally, Izzy can create the bones of her images using dark shadows. Plus, Izzy’s mind works fast, so working on an ipad allows her to quickly create multiple versions of one idea.

“I’d say my approach to everything is: throw everything on the table and then clean it up and pull it all back. I make heaps of iterations, heaps of sketches. I open lots of new documents and new pages, and, as I’m going, I find the bits I like. And then it’s this big cleanup process.

“It’s a lifelong process of chaos and cleaning.”

Folks who are familiar with Izzy’s vibrant work might be surprised to learn that her wardrobe mainly consists of black and white garments, and her workspace is “hyper-minimal”, made up of a big white table. “I think because my thoughts and my art are very colourful, I like to keep everything around me as clean and clear as possible. Hard to explain, but I feel like it creates so much more space and room for bringing the colour into my pieces of work,” she says. “I also like some really calming music playing in the background, and a little bit of incense or a diffuser going – creating a very Zen workspace is extremely important to me in my practice.”

Izzy is extremely grateful to have a calming space to work from again – she recently moved back to Newcastle after living and working in Bordeaux, France, with her partner for a year. “My partner works in wine. We were looking for a place we could both go. I’ve always been really inspired by French artists. I think they make the most beautiful stuff, so I kind of wanted to go and see what they’re seeing,” she says. “One of the reasons I became a digital illustrator was so that I could travel and keep working at the same time, so that was really a dream come true.

“But I’ve come back because I freaking love Australia, and I missed the ocean so, so much. The ocean and the climate and the people. I’m much more inspired when I’m in Australia, which was an unexpected surprise. I thought I’d go to Europe and be so inspired, but I just really missed it here.”

Before launching her art career, Izzy worked as a motion graphic designer for a broadcasting network in Sydney/warrane. One day, on the train to work, she decided to whip out her ipad and start drawing. “I remember following so many tutorials and just being like, ‘How are these people doing this?’ I did not understand. And I just kept practising. Every single day I’d be drawing on my commute to work, and slowly, after a year of relentless practice, some things started to click.”

She moved back to Newcastle during COVID, kept drawing, and began growing an audience online. “Then one day, I was just like, ‘It’s now or never. I am putting all my savings into giving myself a year to try and work this out.’ So I quit my job and I dedicated myself full-time to drawing, and inevitably I just started growing.”

Izzy practised tirelessly and, eventually, her efforts started to pay off. “I got lucky, in a way, when I started to be noticed, and I got a few job opportunities,” she says. “It started to take off quite quickly – or, it felt like it was quite quickly, but it had been two years of drawing every single day.”

Growing up, Izzy loved drawing, but the fear of not getting work prompted her to study design instead of fine arts. Her advice to artists who are grappling with similar concerns is to remember they have “nothing to lose” and to give themselves time and space to create. “My advice would be to try as much as possible to push out any expectation they might have heard or any belief around what they think their career would look like or should look like,” she says. “Because you see it time and time again, when people just really believe in themselves and actively push out what other people are trying to tell them, amazing things happen … A lot of people thought I was crazy for quitting my job because I had a good job, but I just ignored them and found my own way.”

Izzy’s life decisions over the past few years seem spontaneous – quit job, move to France – but, like her art process, Izzy’s choices are underpinned by self-confidence and discipline. “I am very much a mix between chaos and careful planning,” she says.

“I’ll make spontaneous decisions and then really sit down and be with that choice for an extended period of time. And I think that it works very well for an illustration practice, because it does require spontaneous bursts of creativity and you have to be able to get the piece actually made, which truly takes dedication and planning and patience. So I think it’s a fine line to walk.”

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2025/01/12
Infoman

Refined chaos

Jenkins

Frankie 01 Jan 2025 OUR COVER ARTIST, IZZY LAWRENCE, KEEPS HER FAST-PACED CREATIVE MIND IN CHECK BY EMPLOYING DISCIPLINE AND MINIMALISM.

Every morning, while looking out at the ocean from her home in Newcastle/mulubinba, artist Izzy Lawrence gets a burst of creative inspiration. “If I see something that has a particularly good glean or glisten then I feel urged to draw pretty instantly. At the moment, I’ve been looking at water every day, and so I’m just imagining scenes with water, which is why the timing of the frankie cover was perfect.”

For our summer bumper issue cover, Izzy has created an original poolside artwork in her signature, ultra-dreamy style. To consistently evoke that style – which almost feels like ’70s luxury – Izzy is extremely disciplined in her use of colour, light and shadow. “I have a palette of about 10 colours that I always go back to – a couple of dark shades, a couple of mid shades and a couple of highlight shades,” she says. “Having this limited palette has been really useful for me in creating my work, because sometimes I need to draw something and the colour that I need isn’t in my palette, and so I have to be creative about which colour is going to fit the best. “Which colour makes the highlight on this object feel right?

Is it going to be a baby blue? Or is it going to be a light orange? Or is it going to be a light pink?”

Izzy learnt this restrictive technique from her beloved high-school art teacher. “She was the one who first taught me about light and shadow, and made me realise that the colour doesn’t tend to be too important,” she says. “Bear with me for a second, because it is a little abstract, but I love that you can change the colours around. You can make them completely opposite and an object can still be deeply recognisable and sometimes feel more familiar, because sometimes the colour of something in a memory is actually different to the literal colour you imagine. In your head, something like an apple is red, but in a memory, maybe you’re looking at it at night-time, and that makes it purple … I think altering colours often creates a more emotional response within people.”

These days Izzy predominantly works in digital illustration, because it allows her to break the traditional rules of painting.

For example, when painting you typically use light colours first and build up to the dark colours, but by working digitally, Izzy can create the bones of her images using dark shadows. Plus, Izzy’s mind works fast, so working on an ipad allows her to quickly create multiple versions of one idea.

“I’d say my approach to everything is: throw everything on the table and then clean it up and pull it all back. I make heaps of iterations, heaps of sketches. I open lots of new documents and new pages, and, as I’m going, I find the bits I like. And then it’s this big cleanup process.

“It’s a lifelong process of chaos and cleaning.”

Folks who are familiar with Izzy’s vibrant work might be surprised to learn that her wardrobe mainly consists of black and white garments, and her workspace is “hyper-minimal”, made up of a big white table. “I think because my thoughts and my art are very colourful, I like to keep everything around me as clean and clear as possible. Hard to explain, but I feel like it creates so much more space and room for bringing the colour into my pieces of work,” she says. “I also like some really calming music playing in the background, and a little bit of incense or a diffuser going – creating a very Zen workspace is extremely important to me in my practice.”

Izzy is extremely grateful to have a calming space to work from again – she recently moved back to Newcastle after living and working in Bordeaux, France, with her partner for a year. “My partner works in wine. We were looking for a place we could both go. I’ve always been really inspired by French artists. I think they make the most beautiful stuff, so I kind of wanted to go and see what they’re seeing,” she says. “One of the reasons I became a digital illustrator was so that I could travel and keep working at the same time, so that was really a dream come true.

“But I’ve come back because I freaking love Australia, and I missed the ocean so, so much. The ocean and the climate and the people. I’m much more inspired when I’m in Australia, which was an unexpected surprise. I thought I’d go to Europe and be so inspired, but I just really missed it here.”

Before launching her art career, Izzy worked as a motion graphic designer for a broadcasting network in Sydney/warrane. One day, on the train to work, she decided to whip out her ipad and start drawing. “I remember following so many tutorials and just being like, ‘How are these people doing this?’ I did not understand. And I just kept practising. Every single day I’d be drawing on my commute to work, and slowly, after a year of relentless practice, some things started to click.”

She moved back to Newcastle during COVID, kept drawing, and began growing an audience online. “Then one day, I was just like, ‘It’s now or never. I am putting all my savings into giving myself a year to try and work this out.’ So I quit my job and I dedicated myself full-time to drawing, and inevitably I just started growing.”

Izzy practised tirelessly and, eventually, her efforts started to pay off. “I got lucky, in a way, when I started to be noticed, and I got a few job opportunities,” she says. “It started to take off quite quickly – or, it felt like it was quite quickly, but it had been two years of drawing every single day.”

Growing up, Izzy loved drawing, but the fear of not getting work prompted her to study design instead of fine arts. Her advice to artists who are grappling with similar concerns is to remember they have “nothing to lose” and to give themselves time and space to create. “My advice would be to try as much as possible to push out any expectation they might have heard or any belief around what they think their career would look like or should look like,” she says. “Because you see it time and time again, when people just really believe in themselves and actively push out what other people are trying to tell them, amazing things happen … A lot of people thought I was crazy for quitting my job because I had a good job, but I just ignored them and found my own way.”

Izzy’s life decisions over the past few years seem spontaneous – quit job, move to France – but, like her art process, Izzy’s choices are underpinned by self-confidence and discipline. “I am very much a mix between chaos and careful planning,” she says.

“I’ll make spontaneous decisions and then really sit down and be with that choice for an extended period of time. And I think that it works very well for an illustration practice, because it does require spontaneous bursts of creativity and you have to be able to get the piece actually made, which truly takes dedication and planning and patience. So I think it’s a fine line to walk.”

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2025/01/12
Infoman

Beds fill up at ‘hotel of mum and dad’ as more young adults move back home

Butler Social policy editor

The Guardian 11 Jan 2025

The “hotel of mum and dad” is the busiest it has been for two decades as an increasing number of young adults choose – or are forced by low wages and rocketing rents – to live with their parents, according to new research.

The prohibitive cost of renting let alone buying a home explained why more twenty and thirtysomethings were “co-residing” with family at an age when their parents would have been living independently, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

An estimated 1.7 million young adults in the UK between the ages of 24-34 are living with parents, equivalent to a just under a fifth of the total cohort, and an increase of 450,000 since 2006, when 13% of this age group lived at home.

The cohort of young adults who return to the family home after university, relationship break-ups or other life events has been dubbed the “boomerang generation”. The trend is most acute in London and other high housing cost areas.

Previous studies have suggested the phenomenon of co-residence over the first 10 years of adulthood is not temporary but is likely to continue and may require a recalibration of expectations and life plans for parents and offspring.

The IFS said the benefits of staying at the hotel of mum and dad were not evenly distributed. Nearly two-thirds of parents who co-resided with their young adult children owned their own home, compared with 25% of parents in social housing.

Young adults living in London might expect their stay in the parental home to save them about £1,000 a month on rent alone, compared with the national average of £560 a month, and £340 for co-residing young adults in Wales.

The IFS said that as well as the financial advantages of paying little or no rent, the possibility of co-residence may offer more benefits to those living near areas with good job opportunities and public transport – again, cities such as London.

Bee Boileau, a research economist at the IFS and co-author of the report, said: “We should not ignore the inequalities that arise [from the hotel of mum and dad].” Although the difficulty of paying the rent was the main driver of co-residence, researchers said the post-Covid surge in the number of young adults with mental and health and other conditions accounted for some of the increase in returners. The decline in marriage, and lower rates of parenthood among 24 to 34 years olds, may also play a minor part in the rise in young adults living at home – though researchers pointed out co-residence may delay having babies or tying the knot.

The boomeranger trend is not confined to the UK.

The IFS said that similar increases in co-residence had been identified in the US, Australia and Canada. Researchers added that UK rates were higher than in Nordic countries and “significantly lower” than in southern Europe.

Cultural norms about living with parents into adulthood also explained some big differences in young adult co-residence in the UK. In Bangladeshi communities 62% of 24-34 year olds live at home.

Frustrated young adults – and their equally frustrated parents – may be comforted by data which show that the 43% of 25-year-olds living at home falls to 9% of those aged 34.

Young adult men are more likely to live with their parents. Over twice as many men (12%) as women (5%) are living at home by the age of 34.

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2025/01/12
Infoman

Beds fill up at ‘hotel of mum and dad’ as more young adults move back home

Butler Social policy editor

The Guardian 11 Jan 2025

The “hotel of mum and dad” is the busiest it has been for two decades as an increasing number of young adults choose – or are forced by low wages and rocketing rents – to live with their parents, according to new research.

The prohibitive cost of renting let alone buying a home explained why more twenty and thirtysomethings were “co-residing” with family at an age when their parents would have been living independently, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

An estimated 1.7 million young adults in the UK between the ages of 24-34 are living with parents, equivalent to a just under a fifth of the total cohort, and an increase of 450,000 since 2006, when 13% of this age group lived at home.

The cohort of young adults who return to the family home after university, relationship break-ups or other life events has been dubbed the “boomerang generation”. The trend is most acute in London and other high housing cost areas.

Previous studies have suggested the phenomenon of co-residence over the first 10 years of adulthood is not temporary but is likely to continue and may require a recalibration of expectations and life plans for parents and offspring.

The IFS said the benefits of staying at the hotel of mum and dad were not evenly distributed. Nearly two-thirds of parents who co-resided with their young adult children owned their own home, compared with 25% of parents in social housing.

Young adults living in London might expect their stay in the parental home to save them about £1,000 a month on rent alone, compared with the national average of £560 a month, and £340 for co-residing young adults in Wales.

The IFS said that as well as the financial advantages of paying little or no rent, the possibility of co-residence may offer more benefits to those living near areas with good job opportunities and public transport – again, cities such as London.

Bee Boileau, a research economist at the IFS and co-author of the report, said: “We should not ignore the inequalities that arise [from the hotel of mum and dad].” Although the difficulty of paying the rent was the main driver of co-residence, researchers said the post-Covid surge in the number of young adults with mental and health and other conditions accounted for some of the increase in returners. The decline in marriage, and lower rates of parenthood among 24 to 34 years olds, may also play a minor part in the rise in young adults living at home – though researchers pointed out co-residence may delay having babies or tying the knot.

The boomeranger trend is not confined to the UK.

The IFS said that similar increases in co-residence had been identified in the US, Australia and Canada. Researchers added that UK rates were higher than in Nordic countries and “significantly lower” than in southern Europe.

Cultural norms about living with parents into adulthood also explained some big differences in young adult co-residence in the UK. In Bangladeshi communities 62% of 24-34 year olds live at home.

Frustrated young adults – and their equally frustrated parents – may be comforted by data which show that the 43% of 25-year-olds living at home falls to 9% of those aged 34.

Young adult men are more likely to live with their parents. Over twice as many men (12%) as women (5%) are living at home by the age of 34.

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2025/01/12
Infoman

Sparkling tea challenges festive fizz as perfect partner for toasts

The Guardian 11 Jan 2025

The key question is usually “milk or sugar?” but it could soon be “still or sparkling?” as tea becomes the latest target of a foodie makeover.

Traditional cuppas may be losing the battle with coffee, particularly among younger Britons, but tea is winning new fans as a soft drink with “wellbeing” powers, and a headachefree alternative to booze.

Sales of high-end sparkling tea soared over Christmas as it replaced champagne for festive toasts, and it is fast becoming a staple of “nolo” (no- and low-alcohol) ranges in supermarkets and drinks specialists such as Majestic Wine.

Real, a Buckinghamshire-based drinks company, says demand for its sparkling tea, which costs about £10 a bottle, is soaring. Over Christmas, sales of its green tea-based Dry Dragon and Peony Blush (from white peony tea), were up 72% and 60% on 2023 levels at Ocado and Waitrose respectively. The company is also behind wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd’s £17 sparkling tea, with 1,600 bottles sold over the holiday period.

While most tea-based soft drinks tend to be made from extracts rather than leaves, more expensive sparkling teas usually involve a fermentation process, resulting in a more complex flavour that lends itself to comparison with wine.

Last year Twinings launched its own canned sparkling tea aimed at health-conscious consumers. Bolstered by fruit juice and vitamins, the various flavours promise to boost drinkers’ immune systems or lift flagging energy levels, and retail at about £2 per can.

The travails of Typhoo, which changed hands in a rescue deal at the end of last year, highlighted waning demand for traditional tea. A poll by research company Mintel suggested that only 45% of UK adults drink a standard cuppa at least once a day.

But while we no longer put the kettle on so often, tea is still part of our daily lives. Polina Jones, a food and drink expert at the data firm NIQ, points to the rise of bubble tea and kombucha as proof that we are not “falling out of love” with tea.

For Adrian Hodgson, co-founder of Real, tea is “an amazing ingredient”, prized for its flavour as well as its health credentials. “Fermentation delivers natural flavours, with complexity coming from the tea’s astringency and acidity,” he said.

But sparkling tea faces the “same hurdle as other alcohol alternatives in justifying its price”, Mintel’s Kiti Soininen warned. More than half of adults told the company that the price of ‘nolo’ drinks put them off.

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2025/01/11
Infoman

Developer Needed to Build Voice-Driven AI Life Coach with Blockchain Integration

Posted yesterday Worldwide

I’m seeking a talented developer (or team) to help bring LifeCoachAIBot to life—a cutting-edge AI-powered digital life coach that combines advanced conversational AI, voice interaction, and blockchain payment integration. The bot will deliver high-quality coaching experiences based on ontological coaching techniques and literature, offering transformative personal growth tools.

The project is ambitious but achievable, aiming for a mobile app and web-based terminal where users can engage with the bot in voice-based conversations, pay via Phantom Wallet with Solana, and provide feedback to refine the AI over time.

-Program the bot with detailed coaching techniques, methodologies, and parameters. -Integrate OpenAI or ChatGPT API for natural language processing (NLP). -Enable learning and improvement through post-session feedback integration. -Implement speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) systems for seamless vocal interactions. -Develop a web-based AI terminal for coaching sessions. -Create a mobile app for on-the-go access and smooth wallet integration. -Integrate Phantom Wallet for Solana-based payments. -Ensure secure, fast, and seamless transactions.

Desired Skills and Experience

-Proficiency in Chatbot Development and NLP (ChatGPT or OpenAI API). -Expertise in speech-to-text and text-to-speech integration. -Experience with blockchain integration, especially Phantom Wallet and Solana. -Web and mobile app development skills.

Questions for Bidders:

-Do you have experience working on projects with voice-based AI interactions? -Can you handle the blockchain payment integration, or would we need a specialist? -How would you approach programming the bot to incorporate coaching techniques and methodologies? -Is a launch by May 2024 feasible, and what timeline would you suggest? -Could you provide a rough cost estimate for the entire project?

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your pricing and any relevant past projects!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and proposals!

2025/01/02
Infoman

Can you read as well as a ten-year-old?

Economist (UK) 14 Dec 2024

Can you read as well as a ten-year-old?

DOES IT OFTEN feel as if the world is getting stupider? Data released on December 10th by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, suggest this may not be all in your head. Roughly every ten years the organisation asks adults in dozens of places to sit tests in numeracy and literacy. The questions it poses are not abstract brainteasers, spelling tests or mental arithmetic. They aim to mimic problems people aged 16-65 face in daily life, whether they are working in a factory or an office, or simply trying to make sense of the news.

The latest tests were carried out in 31 rich countries, and their findings are unnerving. They suggest that a fifth of adults do no better in maths and reading than might be expected of a primary-school child. The direction of travel is even less encouraging. In maths, average scores have risen in a few places over the past ten years, but fallen in almost as many. In literacy, a lot more countries have seen scores decline than advance, despite the fact that adults hold more and higher educational qualifications than ever before.

Demographic change offers some explanation. New immigrants often struggle with a new language. The native-born have ageing brains. But even after adjusting for this, trends remain gloomy, especially in literacy. Some speculate that Netflix, video games and social media are sapping acuity. It is just as likely that education and training systems have misfired.

These disappointing results deserve more attention than they are likely to get (see Finance & economics section). Basic numeracy and literacy are oddly unfashionable causes—especially when adults lack them. Students of education prefer to debate how to teach fashionable “soft skills”. Hype around generative artificial intelligence does not help: harping on about the importance of times-tables seems even more fuddyduddy when talking robots promise to do all the hard work.

Yet a century of technological upheaval has not cut demand for people who are good with numbers, or who have a way with words. Adults who do badly in the OECD’s tests earn vastly less than those who ace them. They are also in poorer health, less satisfied with their life, less trusting of others and more likely to feel that they have no voice in politics. In many countries the gap in ability between the highest- and lowest-skilled grownups is widening (not because smarty-pants are doing better, but because the least able are doing worse). Writ large, such trends lead nowhere good.

What to do? Improving lessons for children is the surest way of creating more capable grown-ups; governments ought to start there. England’s adults have crept up the OECD’s league table, mostly because the youngest ones (aged 16-24) are scoring better than before. That may reflect reforms which have made exams for older teenagers more difficult, and begun requiring youngsters who fail them to try again. In America, which has done fairly badly, states are junking tests that were in the past used to determine who graduated from high school. Grades there are inflating unchecked.

The second task is to oil creaking systems for educating adults. These hand dropouts second chances; they also serve people who change careers and help migrants integrate. Yet politicians grant them paltry budgets, in part because they underestimate the trickiness of what they are being asked to accomplish. People with the weakest skills tend to have the least time and money for self-improvement. They are less likely to attend adult classes, or get training, even though they are the most in need.

In too many places a mania for universities has sapped funding and focus from all the other kinds of lessons that people aged 18 and above could be offered. Degrees are becoming less meaningful: the OECD has found that even some university graduates post numeracy and literacy scores that might embarrass a child. Meanwhile, oldies who want to return to class without embarking on long, expensive university courses often find good alternatives are lacking. Accelerating efforts to fix all these problems seems like a bright idea. ■

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2024/12/25
Infoman

Lego toys with new ideas

Economist (UK) 21 Dec 2024

THE VENUS DE MILO; “Mona Lisa”; 250 skulls on a mirrored wall; a six-metre Tyrannosaurus rex. You can see all this and more at “The Art of the Brick”, a touring exhibition currently in Berlin. It is the work of Nathan Sawaya, a former lawyer. His chosen medium? Lego bricks.

Lego guards its bricks jealously. Early in Mr Sawaya’s artistic career, the Danish toymaker sent him a cease-and-desist order. (Now a “Lego certified professional”, he builds with the firm’s blessing.) At Lego’s headquarters in Billund, in Denmark, “master builders” work behind tinted windows, hidden from prying eyes. This year the EU’s General Court ruled in Lego’s favour in a trademark dispute with a German company.

“We are the most reputable brand in the world, so we want to be super-careful with our reputation,” says Niels Christiansen, Lego’s chief executive. When you are the world’s biggest toymaker, that reputation relies on keeping your customers— young and old—enchanted. Mr Christiansen also believes it will depend on making Lego’s billions of plastic bricks in a way that is friendlier to the planet.

Lego did not begin with plastic. Its founder, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, started the firm in 1932 as a maker of wooden toys, truncating leg godt, Danish for “play well”, to form its name. He patented his plastic bricks in 1958 (and died later that year).

Two years on, after a fire destroyed its wooden-toy warehouse, Lego chose to stick with only plastic bricks.

Lego nearly went under in 2003-04 after branching into too many areas, such as children’s clothes and dolls. Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who became chief executive in 2004, sold its theme parks and refocused the firm on bricks and articulated “minifigures”. Under Mr Christiansen, who took over in 2017, Lego has continued to thrive, while most rivals have struggled with the toy business’s ever-shifting fads.

Over the past 20 years the company’s revenue has grown ten-fold, reaching DKr66bn ($9.7bn) in 2023 (see chart). A decade ago it became the world’s largest toymaker by revenue. Today its sales are greater than those of its two biggest rivals—Mattel, creator of Barbie, and Hasbro, maker of Nerf guns—combined. In 2023 it opened 147 shops around the world, taking its total to 1,031, and built factories in America and Vietnam. Sales in the first half of 2024 were up by 13%, year on year, even as the global toy market shrank. In 2004 the company was lossmaking; in 2023 its net profit was DKr13bn, implying an enviable margin of nearly 20%.

Playing to win

Can the toymaker maintain its success? “We need to stay relevant for kids and adults,” says Mr Christiansen. New sets keep coming; nearly half the products in its range in 2023 were released that year. The firm also makes more than 140 elaborate sets, some with thousands of pieces, for adult fans of Lego ( AFOLs), who now account for one-fifth of sales.

But competing with the online world for time is hard. On average, American children aged 8-12 spend 4-6 hours a day watching screens of various types, from smartphones to televisions, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. That is why in 2022 Lego invested in a partnership with Epic Games, maker of “Fortnite”, a popular video game, to build “engaging digital experiences for kids of all ages”. Their arrangement has proved lucrative.

So far Lego’s attempts to find a green alternative to plastic, the company’s other big challenge, have been less successful. Still, Mr Christiansen plans to make bricks entirely from sustainable material by 2032. Lego has started manufacturing some pieces with a new plastic made using renewable energy and recycled material. Renewable resin is up to 60% dearer than plastic made of fossil fuel, but Mr Christiansen says he is prepared to absorb the cost. By buying lots of it, he hopes to create a market for the material and push its cost down. He intends to reduce Lego’s carbon footprint by 37% by 2032 (compared with 2019) and be carbon neutral by 2050.

Family ownership allows Lego to take the long view, Mr Christiansen says. (A foundation owns a quarter of the firm; the Kristiansen family owns the rest.) After 2032 the path to carbon neutrality will be steeper, he admits, but “we serve kids”— the inheritors of the planet. And, he surely hopes, tomorrow’s AFOLs. ■

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2024/12/25
Infoman

Liquid lunches

Economist (UK) 21 Dec 2024

BRITONS LOVE a sandwich. But rather than eating their lunch, a growing number have started to drink it. Once a niche product for dieters and convalescents, meal-replacement drinks are moving into the mainstream.

Six years ago less than one in ten British adults told YouGov, a pollster, that they would consider buying such a thing. Soylent, an American brand, found the going hard when it launched in Britain. But Britons are now taking to a food fashion with a global market worth some $14bn, by one estimate. The choice for consumers has grown. Huel, a Hertfordshire-based startup whose profits have nearly tripled in the past year along with record sales, is now available in seven in ten supermarkets across the country.

Efficiency is part of the appeal. According to a survey by Compass Group, a food-services firm, British employees spend less than 33 minutes on lunch. But given that the average sandwich is scoffed down in less than five minutes, saving time can’t be the only draw.

Economy is another. Huel’s powdered formula, and those of rivals such as Myprotein and yfood, provide meals at a cost of between £1.30 ($1.65) and £1.80 each. By comparison, an egg-and-cress sandwich at M&S costs £3.25.

Huel and its peers claim to be a healthy choice, too (because of the balance of nutrients they contain). They have dropped the “meal-replacement” label. “It’s not a term we use because it implies something that’s inferior,” says Huel’s CEO, James McMaster, “whereas our product is vastly superior.” Nu26, another brand, calls itself a “nutritionally complete” shake; yfood dubs itself “smart food”.

Clever marketing has helped shed the dour image of being diet drinks. Huel’s monochromatic look has drawn a cult following among gym rats and girl bosses. Slogans about efficiency and empowerment rather than weight loss or restriction aim to position the products as both practical and aspirational. “If everyone had Huel, the world would be a much, much better place,” Mr McMaster claims. But it’s still hard to beat a tasty sandwich.

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2024/12/25
Infoman

WORLDS BENEATH THE GLOSS OF DUBAI’S OVER-THE-TOP LUXURY

New York Times (International Edition) 21 Dec 2024

After the discovery of oil in 1966, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates transformed within a generation, constructing artificial islands visible from space, the world’s tallest tower, gilded hotels and indoor ski slopes. In many ways, Dubai is a carnival mirror reflection of over-the-top luxury, with high-end outposts of famous international chefs and futuristic constructions (like the new Museum of the Future, complete with roaming robots). While that is the Dubai many visitors experience, this itinerary adjusts that mirror to reveal some of the worlds beneath the glossy surface — in the Russian fur sold in sweltering souks, the happy commotion of picnics on night beaches, the immigrant cooking and the nostalgia of an 18th-century fishing and pearling village transformed by visions of the future.

Friday

4 P.M. | RIDE AN ELEVATOR TO THE FUTURE

In Dubai’s skyscraper-filled financial district, life in the year 2071 is imagined inside the interactive Museum of the Future. The seven-story structure, which was designed with the help of an algorithm, is shaped like a human eye and engraved in Arabic calligraphy. Lift off to an imagined space station in an elevator simulating commercial space travel, press a button to watch nature come to life in a digital recreation of the Amazonian rainforest, browse a DNA library of thousands of species and check out a flying school bus. If you come across a resident robot (like a penguin “flying” above, or a roving dog), wave to start an interaction. Entry, 149 dirhams, or about $40.50.

7 P.M. | GRAB A DRINK AND SHISHA

Walk a short distance to the Jumeirah Emirates Tower to relax among vines and palm trees at Ninive, an alfresco cocktail lounge that is an urban reimagination of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. In alcoves made from brass and wood, under dancing lantern lights, settle into cushions woven in geometric Al Sadu fabric and sip a cocktail infused with tamarind (80 dirhams) while sharing a plate of za’atar chickpea dip (60 dirhams) and shisha (flavored tobacco smoked through a water pipe; 160 dirhams). The experience is a mix between a majlis (Arabian sitting room) and a caravansary (the style of inns dotting land routes along the ancient Silk Road). Note that it is illegal to drink alcohol in public, but it is permitted in licensed restaurants, hotels and bars.

9 P.M. | EAT AT A HIDDEN JAPANESE-STYLE LISTENING BAR

A 15-minute drive south in downtown Dubai, at the Pullman Hotel, hidden behind a record store and past a dark vestibule, is Honeycomb Hi-Fi. In the dimly lit dining room, inspired by Japanese listening bars, enjoy izakaya-style dishes like seaweed salad (46 dirhams) or chicken yakitori skewers (55 dirhams) with cocktails made with Roku gin and sake (65 to 80 dirhams) to a soundtrack of sets by D.J.s from Lebanon, Egypt and Sudan. In an anteroom is an art gallery showing photographs documenting the sound systems of the cumbia music scene in Latin America.

Saturday 10 A.M. | WALK AROUND THE HISTORIC HEART OF THE CITY

Learn about traditional Emirati life in Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood, an oasis of old-world charm. Wander along winding stone pathways, push open heavy teak doors into homes originally occupied by pearl merchants, climb up to wind towers with small windows that open into the canopies of trees. Stop by Bayt Al Khanyar Museum (admission, 5 dirhams), which showcases a collection of ceremonial Emirati daggers. Next door, at the Coffee Museum (10 dirhams), sample Arabic coffee and browse ancient roasting and brewing tools. Explore the adjoining Al Fahidi Souk, where vendors sell shawls, herbs, saffron, and knockoff designer bags and watches, and take in views of Dubai Creek, which is dotted with charming dhows, or sailboat taxis.

2 P.M. | TUCK INTO A VEGETARIAN THALI

Take a taxi 10 minutes west to Karama, a working-class neighborhood of low-rise buildings with saris and pajamas hung to dry, and follow the aroma of ghee into Maharaja Bhog, a multicourse, all-youcan-eat restaurant with the ambience of an Indian wedding party that specializes in vegetarian thali, a platter featuring many small dishes (59 dirhams per adult). Wash your hands in a copper bowl that is brought to your table and take in the cheerful chaos of clinking spoons, the hiss of frying oil and laughter over the hum of classical Indian music. A rotating cast of waiters appears, swinging serving bowls over your head and doling out shallow pools of chutney alongside a selection of curries, dals, roti and rice from the western Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

4 P.M. | EXPLORE CONTEMPORARY ART

Head south to Alserkal Avenue, a cultural district where you can browse art in a cluster of warehouses that were part of a former marble factory. Look for the public art installation of makeshift shelters by the Palestinian artist Dima Srouji, which is spread along the avenue (through Feb. 26). Stop by the Leila Heller gallery to see abstract paintings by the Lebanese artist Marwan Sahmarani (through Jan. 15), and explore the tantric symbolism of paintings by the Indian artist Sohan Qadri at 1X1 Art Gallery (through Jan. 9). At Cinema Akil, a retro art-house cinema with mismatched couches and vintage posters, catch a screening of an international short (56 dirhams). Afterward, shop a collection of prints, film cameras and books at Gulf Photo Plus and stop by Nappa Dori for gorgeous Indian leather goods.

8 P.M. | EAT SEAFOOD BY THE HARBOR

Choose your dinner adventure. Dig into salmon carpaccio, yellowtail sushi and Indomie instant noodles mixed with beef chorizo at 3Fils, a diner by the Jumeirah Fishing Harbor, while taking in the breeze and the view of fishing boats and Jet Skis on the water. No alcohol, no reservations (the line moves quickly); dinner for two, around 200 dirhams. Or join a river of traffic turning into Antar or Al Ijaza Cafeteria, both near Jumeirah Beach Road, two beloved, neon-lit fast-food storefronts serving shawarma, porotta flatbreads rolled around kebabs and milky chai since the 1990s, before the homogenizing bulldozer of global food chains arrived. Try the hassan mathar (9 dirhams), a pocket sandwich with spitroasted chicken, cheese, fries and hot sauce.

Sunday

7 A.M. | BIKE THROUGH THE DESERT

Watch the sun come up over the vast Al Marmoom Desert as you bike along Al Qudra Cycle Track, a 30-minute drive or Uber ride east from the city center. Rent a bike at Trek Bicycle Store (166 dirhams for two hours) at the start of the dedicated cycling path, which has loops suitable for various levels of riders and groups, and is equipped with rest stops and water stations. The thrill of riding past undulating dunes, ghaf trees and date palms, glimpsing Arabian oryxes (native long-horned antelopes) and camels in the wild will make waking early worth it. Stop for rest roughly four miles in (six kilometers) at Al Qudra Lakes, an oasis that attracts migratory birds including flocks of flamingos. Take in the sounds of families stretching out on picnic mats, peeling fruit with pocketknives and humming songs.

11 A.M. | HAVE A PALESTINIAN BRUNCH

Wipe off the dust and head west to Mama’esh, a Palestinian restaurant in the Al Manara neighborhood that feels like a family’s living room, with walls covered in photographs, artifacts and mementos of daily life in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. There is a ticker announcing prayer times and a shelf crowded with herbs and recipe books.

Mama’esh specializes in manakish, the traditional flatbread baked in stone ovens with olive oil from Palestinian villages and topped with za’atar, cheese or meat. Try the ful medammas (spiced fava beans), cheese manakish with hummus, and a stew of spiced eggplant, lentils and pomegranates. Brunch for two, around 100 dirhams.

NOON | TAKE A BOAT OUT

Hire a yacht, staffed with a crew, which costs surprisingly less than the arm and leg than it sounds like (450 dirhams an hour for up to 10 adults and children with Everest Yacht Charter; minimum rental is two hours).

You’ll leave behind the hustle of the city, drawn toward the lull of the sea as you taste the salt in the air and take in the skyline from a different perspective, cruising past the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel; the palm-shaped, artificial islands of Palm Jumeirah; and the Arabian archway of the Atlantis hotel. Bring along a portable speaker to play your own music, as well as your brunch leftovers and swimwear and a change of clothes so you can anchor midsea and jump into the water.

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2024/12/21

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