Inside the World Cup Chaos, the Truth About China’s Fast Fashion Empire and the Future of BMW Design

Dear Fellow Non-Obvious Thinker,

The chaos and greed of the World Cup are on full display as matches start today—and it’s also the lead story in this week’s newsletter. You’ll also read the truth about how fast fashion is really made in China and the rising problem of haunted updates and software death. In bonus stories, we explore the future of BMW design, changes to the Instagram algorithm and the latest country to introduce a ban on social media for kids under 16 years old.

Enjoy the stories and stay curious!

This Week’s New Videos …

The 14-Day Bikini and How Fast Fashion Really Works

Among the many misperceptions about Chinese manufacturing, one of the biggest may be that everything made in China is being created in megafactories with enormous scale, automation and technology. The truth is actually far more interesting, as you can see in this short video linked above from an online influencer and China business consultant who publishes content under the username @ericcrackschina. His videos have been viewed over 14 million times and most of them go behind the scenes to challenge stereotypes about business in China.

When I returned to China, I saw a different country from the one the world imagines — dynamic, ambitious, messy, and deeply human. That was when I decided to share what I see firsthand — through videos, consulting, and conversations that make China accessible to anyone curious enough to learn. Today, through TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, I tell stories about modern China — its coffee culture, factory cities, start-up energy, and everyday people.

The “14-Day Bikini” video breaks down, step by step, exactly how Chinese manufacturers can create fast fashion and get it to market through a network of home-based tailors who work to specs and deliver micro-batches of garments to a centralized distributor. There is no huge factory, and no futuristic automation. Just people sitting in their home-based studios with sewing machines. The broader observation here is that many cities in China are so specialized in various industries, that they reduce the need for parts or services to travel between places.

The real economy of scale is putting everything needed for manufacturing, assembly and shipping of a single product category all in the same place. 60% of the world’s small home appliances are made in a single city in China. This is not about cheap labor – it’s about a dense import-free strategy that brings everything needed to make a product available to manufacturers within a five-kilometer radius. All brought to life through the content and videos of one influencer motivated to correct misperceptions and share a misunderstood world works to those who care to discover it.

Your Ongoing Tech Problem: Haunted Updates and Software Death

We all know about the physical death of a device. The screen that is irreversibly destroyed or the battery that fails to hold a charge. These are the natural deaths of our devices. There is a rising understanding of a different sort of unnatural digital demise, though, often instigated by something as seemingly innocent as a software update or an obscure press release from a company announcing the cessation of tech support for “outdated” models. This is software death and it’s a moment we all will increasingly suffer from:

“The post-warranty graveyard used to be easy to recognize: cracked screens, swollen batteries, and charging ports full of pocket lint. Now the graveyard has paperwork, compatibility warnings, and software that slowly stops cooperating. The gadget can still turn on. It can still look fine on a desk. Then one day the company changes what “usable” means, and the thing you paid for starts practicing being trash.”

The human response to this will be predictable. Disconnecting devices from the Internet to prevent auto-updating. More online tutorials on how to reverse this device bricking. Entire online support communities to simultaneously complain about this forced obsolescence while sharing theories on how to prevent or reverse it. The entire thing will be a very human manifestation of a well understood theory of behavioral psychology: the endowment effect and loss aversion. Sometimes described as “twin forces” – the idea that we will increasingly do whatever we can to hold onto the things we consider to be ours is one that is on a collision course with the tech industry’s desire to lock us into upgrade cycles for those same things. I suspect the result will be one of the great ongoing tensions that will shape the tech industry over the next decade.

The Chaos of the World Cup

This week the FIFA World Cup is coming back to North America and it’s hard to imagine a more “American” homecoming. There are reports of soaring ticket prices due to the rampant and unfair greed of FIFA in a pricing model that economists describe as “rigged by design.” The contradictions in human rights, chaos between teams, travel bans + visa issues and geopolitical tensions led The Atlantic to describe this as the “absurd World Cup.” and international media are accurately describing the event as “riddled with controversy.” Estimates of the lost income from businesses both in productivity and direct costs will be millions of dollars. And FIFA is actively under investigation for price fixing, monopoly practices and unethical ticketing practices. It’s hard to name one aspect of this chaos and controversy of this that doesn’t feel unrecognizably American.

It is also bigger (super-sized?) … no other World Cup has been spread over three countries or included an expanded roster of 48 teams and 104 matches. This World Cup is also the first where a host country has been at war with a participating nation and where “fans from more than a quarter of the 48 countries taking part in the World Cup are facing travel bans, tighter restrictions or high visa rejection rates.”

Given the rampant allegations of bribery when FIFA awarded the World Cup to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, the combined choice of the US, Canada and Mexico for 2026 was supposed to represent a safe, non-controversial choice. It hasn’t really worked out that way. And so today, just hours away from the opening matches, we are left with an unavoidably stained and corrupt World Cup, showcasing an estimated 180,000 empty seats, that no soccer fan can be happy about.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

Killing Justice Podcast

This isn’t exactly a true crime podcast series, but it is true and there does seem to be crime involved. For host Ravi Gupta, the story of a judge who died under suspicious circumstances in India leads him on an unlikely journey through the legal system of the city of Nagpur and some big questions about the nature of Indian democracy along the way. An award-winning show that blends an almost fictional drama with the real discipline of documentary storytelling, Killing Justice is a great summer option to add to your podcast listening playlist.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

How To Sell Out

Can you share your vulnerabilities, expose your race and write for an audience other than your own without selling out? This is the fascinating question at the heart of this book for writers where the author, a successful TV writer and published author, breaks down some of the tradeoffs he made along the way to his success. Partially about being Black and partially about writing while being Black, Chad Sanders identity may be front and center but his relatability as a creator just struggling to maintain his authenticity as his audience grows is the message from this book that stuck with me the most. We first recognized this book as a Longlist selection from the 2025 Non-Obvious Book Awards, and now How to Sell Out is my pick for the Non-Obvious Book of the Week.

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker to inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop? 

Watch my new 2025 speaking reel on YouTube >>

Speaker-reel