Notes from the edge of civilization: December 7, 2025

Just tryin' to 'protect' you; the bloodletting continues; something more to this Karate chop!

This week, India’s government withdrew a controversial mandate that would have required smartphone makers to preload a state-owned cyber security app called Sanchar Saathi on all new devices. Manufacturers were also ordered to install the app on pre-existing devices via software updates.

It didn’t take long for people to recognize the privacy nightmare inherent in the order. The backlash was swift and international. According to Reuters:

The mandate became a talking point on prime-time television and social media, drawing sharp criticism from privacy advocates and members of the political opposition.

The main opposition Congress Party demanded it be rolled back, calling the mandate unconstitutional.

The Internet Freedom Foundation, a free-speech rights group, said on X that it would “fight this direction till it is rescinded.”

The website Inc42 created an infographic to show just how far-reaching the app’s access could have been:

The government says it only wanted to empower users and protect them from scams, and that users could delete the app any time they wanted. But once you see how deep the data hooks go, it’s easy to realize this wasn’t just any old cybersecurity tool. It was likely a soft launch for something far bigger, and the only thing that stopped it was that, this time, people were actually paying attention. Don’t be surprised, however, if it comes back again soon, in a new form with a different brand name.

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Here’s another nail in the coffin of the American Dream.

Small business — the American-as-apple-pie idea that mom and pop can build their own independent financial future through blood, sweat, tears, and toil — is being quietly bled out.

A record number of small businesses are quietly drowning, and have filed for a special kind of bankruptcy known as Subchapter V. Created in 2020 to help companies with less than $7.5 million in debt access faster, cheaper relief, Bloomberg reports that more than 2,200 small businesses have already filed this year.

The immediate triggers include high borrowing costs, skittish consumers, and Trump’s trade wars, but the big picture is the same as always: small independent ‘Main Street’ enterprises have been strip-mined for decades. This obvious pillaging was laid bare when COVID hit: Walmart and Amazon used lockdowns to bolster their bottom line, while mom and pop were forced to close their brick-and-mortar doors for months on end, eventually bleeding them dry.

Last year, the eligibility threshold for filing Subchapter V was slashed from $7.5 million to $3 million — a move that kicked every business with $3–7.5 million in debt out of the program entirely, forcing them back into the slow, expensive labyrinth of full Chapter 11. In theory, this was supposed to reduce Subchapter V usage.

Instead, filings still rose 8%, now outpacing traditional Chapter 11 bankruptcies. In other words, the smallest businesses — those with under $3M in debt — are collapsing faster than ever. Apparently the only thing growing in the American economy anymore is the line for bankruptcy court.

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Oddly enough — and completely unrelated to the announcement of the news below — the Collapse Life team spent a recent weekend rewatching the Rush Hour franchise (we were surprised that three of these films actually got made. As usual, the first was the best!) So when we read the news that Donald Trump was advocating for a fourth Rush Hour film to be made after two decades in dormancy, we sat up and took notice.

Yes, it’s sorta weird for a president to encourage the production of a Hollywood film. (Or is that just us?) But then we dug a bit deeper and the story gets even more bizarre.

According to industry reporting, Trump encouraged Larry Ellison (Oracle, and soon pretty much every legacy media outlet) to talk to his son David, who happens to be the CEO of Paramount Skydance, about reviving the 20-year-old franchise that absolutely no one wants or asked for (well, except this president). Somehow, the project got the green light despite the lack of interest and now has a budget of over $100 million, some portion of which will come from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth.

Strange, huh?

Ah, but wait — the flying nunchucks and roundhouse kicks to the head don’t stop there. Director Brett Ratner previously shopped the treatment but nobody took the bait, in part because Ratner was made a Hollywood persona non grata after sexual misconduct allegations. Now, he’s making documentaries about Melania Trump and Trump Tower, and getting the go-ahead on a Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker buddy cop movie that many entertainment executives consider a “terrible idea.”

So what’s going on? The audience has moved on. Culture has moved on. Half the people who loved the originals now have lower-back pain from simply sitting upright. Could the resurrection of a dead franchise by a technocrat, a sitting president, and a foreign government be a subtle conditioning exercise to remind us who really controls culture now? Is it the rehabilitation of disgraced insiders wrapped in 90s nostalgia? Is it a test to see how much absurdity people will accept?

Maybe it’s all of the above. (We certainly think so. But we might be under the influence of all that analgesic cream on our lower backs…)

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