The most, and least, liked countries in the world

Liking is a very subjective thing, especially when it comes to something as amorphous as a country. But the Democracy Perception Index does its best to quantify it, and Visual Capitalist does its usual excellent job of displaying its results.

It's edifying to see that Canada and Switzerland are jointly at the top of this list, closely followed by Japan, Sweden, Italy and Norway.

The lowest perceptions? You guessed it: Israel, followed by North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran and then ... Land of the Free, Leader of the Free World, the good old US of A. The US is the only major Western democracy with a negative net perception score. Go figure!

You can see why senior assassin raises hackles

If you have kids of a certain age, or if you are at least moderately well-informed in general, you will probably have heard of a popular kids' game called "senior assassin".

I don't know who came up with the name but, thankfully, it doesn't actually involve killing old people. (At least not yet.) It is, however, becoming more than a little controversial. Many kids love it, of course. Many PARENTS love it too, as it gets their kids outside and off their screens. Some parents, though, dislike it. Police and school officials typically HATE it.

Senior assassin is essentially a game of tag with over-sized Nerf-style water pistols. 12th-graders in particular are using it as a kind of rite of passage, marking the end of their schooldays/childhoods, and their passage into the big bad grown-up world (or at least college/university). 

The idea of the game is that they attempt to catch their assigned target with their neon-coloured plastic water guns, eliminating their quarry while avoiding being eliminated themselves. The twist is: no-one knows who is targeting whom, and the assignments are constantly changing as players are eliminated; dedicated apps are used to organize and track the game. There are safe zones, and, bizarrely, you can claim immunity by wearing swim goggles. At the end of the week, the last person standing is the "winner", for what that's worth.

Well, so far so good, I guess. There are some general behaviour rules: be respectful; no trespassing; no chasing people in cars; and no realistic-looking guns. But, of course, kids will be kids, and some of them like to push the rules to the logical limit, and often well beyond. 

There has been a string of unfortunate incidents around the game, including a teen in Guelph, Ontario, who was arrested at gunpoint by police last year when his water gun was mistaken for a real firearm, and a viral video of a homeless person in Kenora, Ontario, being targeted from a car. So much for the rules. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, just this week, a senior assassin player got caught up in a police chase of real gun criminals.

Some schools not only discourage senior assassin but actively ban it, arguing that it is disruptive and potentially dangerous. Some police departments have warned against it too, especially given the very real fears some people in some areas have about gun violence.

Now, I'm all for kids playing outside as the weather warms up. But does it have to involve shooting, whether pretend or not? And does it have to be so feverish, intense and viral?

Should I be concerned that Canada's happiness is slipping?

There's a World Happiness Report published every year - I've mentioned it from time to time in this blog: it seems like an interesting idea, a fun but functional concept.

This year, as always, Finland is top of the list, followed by all the other Scandinavian and near-Scandinavian countries (and, interestingly, Costa Rica). This year's Index has generated more attention that usual here in Canada, though, because Canada has fallen precipitously from 6th to 25th.

Scandal! Horrors!

Why Canada's happiness rating has fallen more than almost any other country is unclear. Social media, weakened family ties, a crumbling welfare state, and several other factors have all been mooted. But other countries are also living under the threat of  tariffs, dire climate change, even existential violation. Other countries use social media at least as much as we do. Why are Canadians more upset about everything than the denizens of other countries?

Actually, that's not the point of my entry.

What I found out this year is that the Global Happiness Index is actually based on a sample population's response to just a single "life evaluation" question. So, people are self-reporting how they feel at a particular point time, which doesn't sound very scientific somehow. Maybe the Canadians were sampled on the day Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and car exports, or the day Trump reiterated his threat to make us the 51st US state? Maybe the Finns are the most delusional people, not actually the happiest? (Finland used to have the highest suicide rate in the world and, although it has improved that statistic impressively in recent years, its suicide rate is still worse than average. How happy can they really be?) And anyway, what happened to Bhutan, the self-styled "kingdom of happiness", with its famous Gross National Happiness metric? It's not on the list at all!

So, should I be concerned about the mental state of Canadians? Well, maybe, although perhaps 25th out of 147 is not all that bad. But surely we can do a better job of measuring happiness than a simplistic question.

Our ethical decisions may depend on the language they are couched in

Here's an interesting thing. You've probably heard of what's usually referred to as the "trolley problem" of ethics and philosophy. So, people have to decide whether to sacrifice one person in order to save five others who are about to be killed by a hypothetical runaway trolley bus (or tram, or train). There are various formulations and variations, like what if it was a fat person or an old person, or what if you had to actually push a person off a bridge in order to save the five rather than just pull a track switch. 

Generally speaking, a sizeable majority think that it is morally permissible to make the utilitarian choice and pull the lever to save the five at the cost of the one. However, much fewer people would push someone off the bridge to save the five, reflecting the increased "emotional resonance" of such an action. 

More recent studies, though, have looked at what difference the language in which the problem is posed makes to people's moral decision-making. The problem was put to people who spoke more than one language, both in their native language and in their second language. By a substantial margin, more people chose to pull the switch to kill the one person in order to save the five if the problem was put to them in their second language, rather than in their native language. The difference was even starker for the more emotive problem of having to push someone off a bridge rather than just pull a rail switch at a distance. Furthermore, the poorer people's mastery of the second language, the more marked the effect.

This suggests that a native language holds much more emotional resonance, while a second language maintains more psychological distance for most people. This makes some intuitive sense, I guess, but it's interesting to see it demonstrated in quite such a stark manner.

You can't buy veggie chicken in Europe any more

The EU comes in for a lot of stick from a lot of folks and for various different reasons. But, for all that, it remains one of the most sensible and civilized blocs in today's world. Yes, it has its problems (Hungary, anyone?) but, for the most part, it does a good job of providing a voice of sobriety and reason in today's increasingly weird and dysfunctional global politics.

Occasionally, though, it missteps. One such misstep is the latest policy decision to ban the use of words like "chicken", "bacon" and "steak" by vegetarian and vegan food producers, even if it is clearly qualified on the label as being vegetarian or vegan. Mysteriously, words like "burger", "nuggets" and "sausage" ARE still allowed, because ... well, I'm really not sure why. Where they stand on the use of "chick'un", "chick'n", etc, I'm also not sure. Incidentally, this ruling also applies to the UK, which - also mysteriously - is still subject to such EU commercial edicts.

Now, it seems pretty unlikely to me that anyone has ever picked up a pack of veggie bacon in a supermarket and been traumatized to find that it contains absolutely no dead animal. The "veggie" part is usually front and centre of their packaging and advertising - it's a positive selling point, after all. (A British survey suggests that 92% of shoppers say they have NEVER mistaken "fake" meat for the "real thing".)

Either way, I think the EU overstepped their brief on this this one. Do they really have nothing better to discuss at the moment, like maybe global security, recession-spawning tariffs, existential changes in the climate?

Why is chocolate STILL so expensive?

It seems like just a few months ago that everyone was kvetching about the record prices of cocoa and chocolate, and now a slump in prices has left warehouses in major producers  Ivory Coast and Ghana full of unsold and mouldering bags of cocoa beans.

Cocoa prices reached historical highs of $12,000 per tonne at the end of 2024, almost doubling during the year and raising Christmas chocolate prices to unheard-of heights. This was due, we were told, to diseased trees in West Africa, adverse dry weather conditions (and, of course, speculation). Demand fell precipitously as prices peaked, and the industry was in panic mode.

Now, we are told that prices have slumped to below $5,000 per tonne in early 2026. African cooperatives can't sell their stocks, partly due to falling demand, because the prices were so high just recently(!), but partly due to excessive supply, because the weather has improved, because the effects of swollen shoot virus are passing, and because of the explosion of Ecuador as a chocolate producer. Ecuador is now the No. 2 producer of cocoa globally. It has high-quality cacao varieties, sustainable and relatively equitable agricultural practices, and high yields, and it is rapidly leaving West Africa in the dust.

However, don't expect the price of your favourite chocolate bar to come down any time soon. Demand is on the increase again, particularly in Asia and the EU, and particularly for premium products - ethical, fair-trade, traceable, organic, low-sugar, etc - and that in itself would be enough to keep prices high. But also commercial chocolate-makers have long lead times and buy through long-term contracts, so their costs may still be relatively high. Furthermore, as they watch world prices slew around wildly, they will charge a premium for that uncertainty.

And anyway, the likes of Hershey, Mondelez and Mars are not charities, and if it looks like consumers are content to pay the higher prices, then those prices are not going to come down, ever. Super-premium brands like Lindt and Ferrero Rocher didn't really increase their already-high prices when cocoa prices went up, and by the same token they will not be reducing them now.

In fact, when was the last time you noticed the price of ANYTHING going down? That's not the way the world works.

Oh, how dating has changed!

Thankfully, it's been 40-odd years since I've had to anything that might be described as "dating". I'm not sure I could bring myself to enter into the modern way of doing it (i.e. using an online app).

I was a bit taken aback, though, at an article about how many women are approaching the process these days. Maybe this is sixth-wave feminism or something (is that where we are?), but it doesn't sound particularly healthy to me.

Apparently, many women, especially financially-independent women, now expect men to pick up the tab on the first, and even subsequent, dates. Gone are the days when women wanted to be seen as equal by paying, or at least splitting, the bill. (Other research suggests that 45% of Canadians expect the bill to be split evenly, with 24% expecting the man to pay, and another 24% saying it should be whoever initiates the date.)

This is nothing to do with traditional values and deferring to the stronger, wealthier sex, or anything like that. This is a purely transactional approach about seeing "what they're bringing to the table in a potential relationship". More specifically, these women argue that there is still a "gender wage gap" where men typically earn more than women and should therefore contribute more to a relationship, and there is still a "beauty tax" where women are expected to pay more to meet societal standards of beauty. They may (or may not) pay on a second or third date to "signal my interest back to him".

Wow. Now, call me old-fashioned, but personally, I'm not particularly sure I'd wanted to be dating a women who thinks that way. I'm not really interested in a woman who feels she has to meet societal standards of beauty, and wants to be subsidized for it. It seems like a very cold and calculating approach to something that should be warm and fuzzy.

However, the article does go on to question why such an attitude has come about, and the answer is probably dating apps. The ease and availability (and also the transactional nature) of app dating has led to a sea change in attitudes, compared to the happy-go-lucky approach of my day, where you just happened on someone in a pub or a party, or you trailed after someone for months on end like a love-sick puppy.

Frankly, it doesn't really surprise me that studies show that fewer people than ever - just 8% of over-18s - are actively dating. Among the reasons put forward are a challenging job market, especially for younger people (and the concomitant decision to focus.on careers first and relationships later), the cost of living in general, a genetal sense of hopelessness about the state of the world, and, yes, "dating app fatigue and choice overload". Quite.

I know I couldn't face it. Let's hope I never have to!

No, there is no epidemic of trans violence

It had to happen. After the horrendous mass shooting in the small town of Tumbler Ridge in northeastern British Columbia, right-wing influencers and agitators are really pushing the transgender issue.

The shooter, a psychologically troubled 18-year old, transitioned from male to female about 6 years ago. That might just have been an incidental factoid in the case, but there is a rampant anti-trans movement, particularly in the United States, that wants to milk it for all it's worth. There is a whole load of misinformation out there about trans people, and specifically about their violent tendencies.

A common claim is that trans individuals are much more likely to be killers than any other demographic. Elon Musk on X was just one of the more influential voices sharing this view. Many previous mass killings have been blamed on trans gender identities by these anti-trans activists even when gender was clearly not an issue. Now they have a shooting where the perpetrator was in fact a trans woman, and they are making hate-filled hay. 

No doubt Donald Trump will get in on the act when he gets his shit together: the chance to bash Canada AND the trans community will be just too much for him to resist. The Trump administration is already looking into ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns, and Trump scion Donald Trump Jr. has claimed, unscientifically and incorrectly, that: "The amount of shootings they have completed or attempted likely pales in comparison with any other radical group, based on how small a group they are. Can't be close!"

Of course, in reality, the vast majority of mass shootings are carried out by white cis men, the same demographic as most of the anti-trans social media conspiracy theorists making the claims. Studies show that about 98% of mass shootings are actually carried out by men, most of them white (in proportion to the general population). The Violence Prevention Project concluded that 97.5% of mass shooting were by cis men, 2% by cis women, and 0.5% by trans people. A Poynter analysis calculated that 0.17% of mass shootings in the USA (6 out of 3,399) were perpetrated by trans individuals. Factcheck.org arrived at an even smaller figure of 0.1%. This is much lower than the 0.5-1.6% representation of trans people in the general US public (in Canada, 0.33% of the population officially identifies as transgendered or non-binary). I'm sure there are many more such analyses if you look.

Haters will hate, as they say. This incident will probably fuel the haters for years to come.

Free solo climber completes Taipei skyscraper climb

There's no way I could have watched it live, even with a 10-second delay, but American daredevil Alex Honnold did indeed complete his "free solo" climb of the 101-storey Taipei 101 skyscraper yesterday.

This ridiculous feat, which you can see video snippets of, took him just an hour and a half, which equates to about a storey a minute. The building is a glass and metal monolith, with all sorts of overhangs and other tricky bits, and looks all but impossible to climb. Success was not necessarily assured. But there he was standing on the pinpoint pinnacle waving to the crowds and not even looking tired. Crazy stuff.

WestJet bows to customer backlash

A viral 30-second TikTok video of a couple of people dealing with WestJet's new smaller-legroom plane layout seems to have been instrumental in pushing Westjet to reverse their policy.

WestJet had changed the layout of 22 of their Boeing 737s to have an extra row of seats in order, they say, to save customers money. Each economy class seat had a 28" pitch (the distance between one seat and the seat in front), compared to the usual North American  29" or 30" pitch. They were also made non-reclining, or with a "fixed recline design" in industry parlance.

They say that this kind of layout in common in Europe, but Canadians were having none of it, and there was a strong backlash from customers. In fact, so strong a backlash that WestJet reversed their decision and reverted to the old layout, saying " We saw that this was all trending in the wrong direction". 

And social media trends are what it's all about these days. So, here's a rare example of a commercial company bowing to the demands of customers.

Two different culinary worlds

A two Michelin-starred restaurant in the small town of Machynlleth in mid-Wales has been given a failing one-star food safety rating by the Food Standards Agency, which puts it below minimum legal operating standards.

The mandatory checks are to ensure that food is being handled and produced hygenically. The one-star rating means that "major improvement" is needed at the fancy restaurant, which charges almost £500 a head.

The chef is predictably outraged, and says he is not embarrassed by the rating, suggesting that the inspectors just don't understand his operations. "Just because our rules don't fit their rules, they're questioning it", he whines.

The worst part of all this, though, is the reaction of influential food critic Giles Coren. "The normal health and safety things, I think it's fair enough, don't really apply", Coren opined, concluding that the rules "should probably be modernised". Coren whittered on about the special nature of the restaurant: "He is cooking with fire ... he stands there on his leather apron, and it's roaring like fireworks". *Yawn*

The Chartered Insitute of Environmental Health confirms that the rules are not "optional, subjective or old-fashioned", and that "no dining experience, however unusual or exclusive, sits outside the law".

On the virtues of solitude

Finally, an article extolling the merits of solitude! I'm not one of the world's great socializers. I like my "me time", always have done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete misanthrope: I do socialize, although it's usually my wife (or a third person) that initiates it. But solitude has earned a bad rap in recent years, and that seems a shame to me.

The main reason, of course, is the veritable explosion of research and media coverage on loneliness. We are told that loneliness is approaching epidemic levels, and that social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 25%, worse than drinking six alcoholic drinks a day, or smoking fifteen cigarettes!

But, as this article stresses, loneliness is not solitude. You can be lonely in a crowded room. People, generally speaking, don't choose to be lonely. Solitude, however, is a deliberate choice to be on your own for a while, to step off the social "stage", with all its stresses, preconceptions and rules, to spend some quiet time alone. Solitude is often thought of as a punishment (time-out for an unruly toddler, solitary confinement for a recalcitrant prisoner), but it can also be a reward: the gift of some "me time" and relaxation.

It doesn't have to involve a two-hour walk in the woods; it can just be 15 minutes snatched away from the social whirlwind. It doesn't have to be structured meditation on a yoga mat; it can just be time spent idly day-dreaming (there's an increasing body of positive research around letting your mind wander too). Read a book, listen to music, knit, go for that two-hour walk in the woods, whatever works for you. Don't use it to catch up on emails or special media, though - that's not solitude. And don't be alone ALL the time; that's not healthy.

There's even some real research to show that some solitude can be beneficial. The "deactivation effect" helps us to calm down by taking the edge off our more intense emotions. It may even serve to recharge our "social batteries", making subsequent social interactions more positive and enjoyable. It presents an opportunity for self-discovery and reflection, and it can be an incubator for problem-solving and creativity.

So, don't be brow-beaten into going to a party you will probably hate. Don't give in to expectations and assumptions that entertaining and mingling is civilized, and time spent alone is depressing and misanthropic. It can actually be quite nice.

The world's most populous cities

I'm sure that, just a few short years ago, Mexico City was the biggest city in the world (by population). Well, fast forward to 2025, and Mexico City is the 15th largest city!

Today the world's most populous cities are pretty much all in Asia:

• Jakarta, Indonesia: 41.9 million
• Dhaka, Bangladesh: 36.6 million
• Tokyo, Japan: 33.4 million
• New Delhi, India: 30.2 million
• Shanghai, China: 29.6 million
• Guangzhou, China: 27.6 million
• Cairo, Egypt: 25.6 million
• Manila, Philippines: 24.7 million
• Kolkata, India: 22.6 million
• Seoul, South Korea: 22.5 million

(Cairo is the only non-Asian city in the top 10.)

The world's coldest capital cities

We're going to be visiting Mongolia next summer - pleasure not business :) - and I thought I remember reading somewhere that the capital city, Ulaanbaatar (sometimes written as Ulan Bator), was the coldest capital city in the world. Knowing how cold Ottawa can be, I thought I would look it up, and it turns out the comparison is not even close.

Ulaanbaatar is indeed the coldest capital city in the world, followed by Astana (Kazakhstan), Moscow (Russia), Helsinki (Finland), Reykjavik (Iceland), and Tallin (Estonia). Ottawa (Canada) is only the seventh coldest capital, which is certainly food for thought.

Ulaanbaatar - which sits at 1,350m above sea level, so that's kind if cheating :) - has an average year-round temperate below zero (-1.5°C). Although temperatures during its short summer (when we will be there) are quite pleasant - in the 20s - winter temperatures in January are in the -36°C to -40°C range. Ouch!

I wonder if they mollify themselves by saying "it's a dry cold" like we do here?

McDonalds - Canadian owned?

As a vegetarian, I don't frequent McDonalds. I think I may have been in one, once in my life, mainly for the wifi. So, I hadn't realized that McDonalds restaurants in Canada are emblazoned with the by-line "Proudly locally owned and operated".

And look, they even have a little maple leaf on the logo!

But wait, McDonalds? It's an American company, no? In fact, it doesn't get much more American than McDonalds, does it? Oh, look, McDonalds in America, also say "Locally owned and operated".

So, what's the deal?.Canada-washing? Well, McDonalds restaurants are franchises. In fact, McDonalds Restaurants of Canada Ltd is a "master franchise" of McDonalds. So, yes, they are technically locally owned, I guess.

But really, it's pushing the issue a bit. I mean, it's still McDonalds, probably the most American thing you can think of, including apple pie (a weird version of which McDonalds also sells).

Finnish air force to phase out use of the swastika

It seems that the Finnish air force still uses the swastika symbol on some of its flags, although it is thinking of phasing them out in the near future. "Sometimes awkward situations can arise with foreign visitors", a spokesperson laconically comments. Well, I can imagine.

As it turns out, Finland's use of the swastika symbol predates (and is unrelated to) its adoption by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party in the 1920s. And of course the symbol itself goes back thousands of years, and has long been a symbol of well-being and luck in Indian cultures, and in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

But whatever its history, the swastika is now forever associated with Nazism, and Finland is, rather belatedly, admitting that it's probably not worth the hassle to retain that particular part of its traditions.

Desperate New York shooter shot up the "wrong" office

In an extraordinary turn of events, the gunman who travelled from Las Vegas to New York in order to exact revenge on the National Football League (NHL), which he blames for the debilitating chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) he incurred from years of playing American football, took the wrong set of elevators in the Manhattan high-rise building and ended up killing four completely unconnected people in a different office, before turning the gun on himself.

Theis is an incredibly sad story, on a whole host of levels. Even if he had found the correct NHL office, killing as bunch of staffers there would hardly have been much fairer. The gunman never played in the NHL, but did play football as a teenager, but he is probably correct in blaming the constant head traumas that characterizes football for his CTE. Killing a few random employees of the NHL probably made a whole lot of sense to this desperate young man.

How airlines charge you more

I think most of us, anecdotally, knew it was happening, but here's an article about how airlines are using AI to charge us more for flights, as well as a few strategies we can use to mitigate the effects a bit.

Many airlines (Delta, Air Canada and Porter are singled out in the article, but I'm sure they are all doing it to some extent) now routinely use AI to identify potential passengers who might be able and willing to pay over the odds for specific flights. So, when you browse an airline's website, what you are seeing are "personalized offers" based on your "willingness to pay". It may just be another example of "dynamic pricing", which has been used for years, but it is now being weaponized by AI (just one more headache AI has thrown our way).

Among the data it uses: past purchases over your lifetime; data from your airline loyalty program; demographic data about income, residence, etc; time of booking (business people, who are assumed to be able to pay more, tend to book later); browsing habits and device types; how full certain flights have been historically; specific events happening in destinations; etc.

Airlines says that it is currently only used for a small minority of sales, but that minority is rapidly increasing, because the airlines like what they see. Canada has slightly better privacy rules than the USA, for example, but given that most people just click "Accept" when faced with all that legal and technical jargon about cookies and permissions, we are pretty much all unwittingly putting ourselves are risk of what are effectively scams. "Implied consent" is often sufficient for some privacy intrusions.

So, what can we do about it? Well, a few things: avoid logging in to an airline's loyalty program until the moment of purchase is perhaps the most important one; use a virtual private network (VPN) to hide your location; clear your device's cookie and browser cache regularly; use third party fare-trackers to avoid giving unnecessary data directly to airlines; use incognito or private browsing; and be wary of the browsing habits of other people in your household, which can influence your own experience (yes, I know!)

It's a pain, for sure, and it's depressing that we have to fight against "the system" for our basic rights in this way, and be compelled to play the games of vendors.

If we can make diamonds in a lab, why do people still want the real thing?

Apparently, lab-grown diamonds are having a moment.

Rather than mining a diamond that took millions of years to create, it is now possible to manufacture artificially lab-grown diamonds that look identical, with essentially equal optical, physical and chemical properties  Using a tiny sliver of real diamond as a carbon seed, and the right pressure, temperature and gasses in a plasma chamber, lab-grown diamonds can be created in just a few weeks.

Lab-grown diamonds are significantly cheaper (up to 70-90% cheaper - they are not, after all, rare), not to mention more environmentally- and politically-friendly in their production process (no "blood diamonds", no environmental degradation from mining operations, even though synthetic diamonds do require a lot of electricity to produce them). Jewellery giants like Pandora, Swarovski and even Prada are getting in on the act. 

Given that celebs like Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Pamela Anderson are buying them, so are lots of other people. Sales of lab-grown diamonds have increased exponentially in recent years: supply has doubled every other year since 2015. Lab-grown diamonds now make up at least 40% of the diamond market.

All of which begs the question: what is the value of a real, natural diamond? Is there anything about a natural diamond that can compel a customer to pay up to ten times more for it over an identical-looking lab-grown version? 

An increasing number of potential customers would tell you "no", but perhaps the main reason that many people continue to say "yes" is the way in which real diamonds keep, and even increase, their value (and their re-sale value). It is their rarity value itself that some people still covet. If you want a family heirloom that you can pass down to your kids and grandkids, a lab-grown gem will just not cut it. And, honestly, some people just like to spend money, and to be seen to spend money (think cars, houses, designer brand clothing).

And don't count the natural diamond industry out just yet. South African company De Beers has traditionally had a stranglehold over the industry, with an almost 90% market share throughout most of the 20th century. It almost singlehandedly created the global industry, with its clever and effective advertising campaigns ("a diamond is forever") and its ability to control supply (and therefore price). It was De Beers that first associated diamonds with love, romance and enduring commitment, a powerful marketing ploy that paid handsome dividends. 

But De Beers no longer enjoys the effective monopoly it once had, and it too decided to get involved in the artificial diamond industry back in the 2010s. In 2024, though, came the news that De Beers was sitting on a huge stockpile of unsold diamonds, valued at around $2 billion. Did the diamond market fall through, or was this just a period of market correction?

Interestingly, De Beers recently took the decision to end its short-lived lab-grown diamond company, Lightbox. As the cost (and value) of lab-grown diamonds continues to fall, De Beers has pledged to lean in to natural diamonds, creating meaningful pieces to celebrate key moments in people's lives, and relegating lab-grown gems to the more lowly function of costume jewellery. De Beers is once again turning its mighty marketing influence to re-establishing the dominance of natural diamonds in the jewellery market. And don't underestimate its ability to change the industry again.

Personally, I have never understood the attraction of jewellery and certainly not the attraction of spending large amounts of money on pieces that are identical to pieces of cut glass. But then, I am not De Beers' market.

Ultimately, it comes down to personal tastes (and money). Do you buy champagne over prosecco? Organic field tomatoes over greenhouse ones? Then you may well be the type to buy natural diamonds over synthetic ones. Horses for courses. Natural diamonds will probably never go out of style.

Bezos' Venice wedding - much ado about very little

I'm not sure that I should be elevating this to the heady heights of "important news", but Jeff Bezos' inpending wedding to Lauren Sánchez has captured the public's attention, mainly for all the wrong reasons. 

When I first heard about it, it was couched in terms like "Jeff Bezos has booked all of Venice for his wedding", and I too was suitably incensed (well, slightly annoyed, truth be told). It seemed cheesy, over-the-top, and just the kind of stunt you would expect a billionaire recently-converted Trump-lover to pull.

There have been the predictable protests against the Amazon boss and his journalist/newscaster fiancée, including by Greenpeace Italy, Everyone Hates Elon, and a new group calling itself No Space For Bezos. There are threats to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles. Venice is already a city suffering from over-tourism, and the locals are quite sensitive on the subject.

Most recently, these groups are boasting of an "enormous victory" when the venue for the culminating event was suddenly moved from the sumptuous Scuola Grande della Misericordia to the Arsenale, which is supposedly further from the centre. How this is an "enormous victory" I'm not sure, and on consulting a map of Venice, I'm not even that sure it's further from the centre, if the centre is defined as the Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale (the Arsenale looks closer to me, if anything). It may be more easily secured, but that's another matter.

That being said, the wedding seems to be far from taking over the whole city, as we have been led to believe. Yes, private jets are expected to jam up the city's airport and mega-yachts to block the harbour for a day or two, and five whole hotels have been booked out in their entirety, even though the guest list is limited to a relatively modest and exclusive 200 guests (including the usual famous-for-being-famous types, like Kim Kardashian, Mick Jagger, Ivanka Trump and Leonardo diCaprio, who are almost certainly not bosom buddies with either spouse-to-be). There are unconfirmed reports that Bezos has booked ALL of the water taxis in town for the event, which could be a bit awkward for other visitors, I guess.

Local officials and councillors actually seem to be quite favourable towards the weddding, which they say will bring major economic benefits to the city, adding that the events are all being held in privately-owned venues, not in publicly-owned palaces or galleries.

Now, I'm no fan of Mr. Bezos, and I routinely try as much as possible to avoid Amazon (which, as an organization, has a whole bunch of legitimate concerns). But it's kind of hard to object too strenuously to a 200-person wedding held on private property, which most of the locals seem generally in favour of. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing was actually set in Messina, Sicily, not Venice, but I think the sentiment probably still applies.