Congratulations are in order for Taylor Swift, who makes her Forbes Rich List debut this year as one of the world’s newly minted billionaires. Not content with inspiring her own branch of economics – Swiftonomics, FYI – the singer is also responsible for causing geopolitical tension in south-east Asia, with her record-busting Eras tour.
The financial value of a Swift gig is of such national importance that Singapore reportedly paid her up to $3m (£2.4m) a show to ensure it was the only place to host Swift on her jaunt to the region this spring, prompting complaints from Thailand and the Philippines. In the words of one Filipino politician: “[It] isn’t what good neighbours do.” If $3m sounds like an awful lot to secure a concert exclusive, that’s small change when you consider the benefits – it’s estimated that her six shows have boosted the Singapore economy by $370m.
Singaporean government ministers aren’t the only ones looking at Swift with dollar signs in their eyes. With the singer en route to Britain this summer, hotels and Airbnb landlords here have hiked their rates accordingly. A Swiftie friend of mine is considering paying £419 for a bed in Edinburgh at the Holiday Inn. Call it dynamic pricing, or just plain old daylight robbery.
Downwardly mobile
I have lost a phone twice in the past month. The first one was yanked out of my hands by a thief on an ebike, and the second – its replacement – has disappeared into the depths of the DPD sorting office without a trace. Unfortunately, stolen mobiles are par for the course in London – two-fifths of robberies here are phone-related, with one snatched almost every six minutes in 2022. The real question is where all these stolen phones are going. According to the Met police officer I spoke to, on a borrowed mobile, lots of them apparently end up in Dubai, where they are sold on to unsuspecting customers. Unfortunately, it seems almost impossible for theft victims like myself to see any kind of justice – within 24 hours of the police looking up the CCTV (or rather, the lack thereof), my case was closed. If it happens to you, the best advice I can give is: get your mobile phone network to blacklist the model’s IMEI number, and render it unusable for the next sucker who tries to get a cheap deal on a stolen phone.
Un-till later
The Amazon Fresh supermarket in my neighbourhood has always struck me as looking like a badly designed Black Mirror set – all shabby-looking prefab shelving and weirdly glossy produce. Now it turns out that its pièce de résistance is a fiction. Amazon trumpeted its Just Walk Out programme – in which you could scan your phone, load your basket and leave without using a till – as an AI triumph. According to an investigation by the Information, it was actually powered by people – specifically, around 1,000 workers in India who had to review 700 of every 1,000 sales. Amazon claims these workers are used to train its AI model, but somewhat tellingly, has decided to start getting customers to use its self-scan trolleys.
Scare stories
Horror is the hottest trend in publishing, with sales of spooky stories rising by 54% in 2023 and the Bookseller reporting that it was a record-breaking year for the genre, pulling in £7.7m in revenue. The reason for its popularity is plain to see – when the world around you feels like a horror show, you may as well sup on even bloodier tales of paranormal fiction. Try British novelist Alison Rumfitt, whose chilling works of social horror have seen her compared with Haunting of Hill House author Shirley Jackson.
• Zing Tsjeng is a journalist and the author of the Forgotten Women book series
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