Chinese conspiracy theory that all humans have a tiny QR code on their left arms, and this is proof that Earth is actually an alien prison and we’re all criminals serving our sentence here is getting a lot of discussion again, with a compilation of photos by various people pointing to a mole on their arm at the exact same place.
Comments are filled with even more people posting photos of their left arms.
A female aerial acrobat fell during her performance and died in Anhui. People’s News reports that the tourism and police department of the local area have formed a task force investigating who’s at fault for this tragedy.
Comments say, “I’ve seen circus performances like these—there’s supposed to be a net under them, so that if any screw ups happened, it at least wouldn’t be fatal. But a lot of people apparently feel like it’s not as exciting to watch a performance with nets???”
A post seeking help, “Could someone tell me if this jade is expensive? My mom can’t stop crying. She was at home, doing god-knows-what, and accidentally broke her jade bracelet. Thankfully, she’s fine, and the matching ring is fine. This jade bracelet and ring set was my mom’s gift to herself after her first successful career advancement. It’s got a lot of sentimental value to her. She really treasures it and never takes it off. I just want to ask what I can do about this. Can it be repaired?
Comments say, “Well, that’s either worth eight figures or 50 bucks.”
A relationship blogger writes a PSA, “I was sitting at a wedding reception with Mr Tang in the very last row. And someone kept making a weird noise. Every few seconds, there’d be an, “Ah!” “Ah!” Because it was so quiet, the noise stood out a lot. I was just going to turn around and see what’s going on, when Mr. Tang stopped me and whispered to me, “It’s someone with Tourette’s. Don’t look.”
Tourettes’ is a nervous system condition that causes frequent, repeated contractions of the muscles or vocal cords. These contractions are sudden, random, uncontrollable, and most often occurs in childhood. It could be a twitch of the shoulders, pulling ears back and forth, suddenly tilting the head, making a funny expression, opening one’s mouth, extending one’s neck, etc. Even more complicated movements, like hitting, kicking, falling to the ground—they’re all involuntary, and occur more frequently with strong emotion. A contraction of the vocal cords manifest as weird noises, anything from clearing the throat, to barking like a dog, to repeating other people’s words, or even swearing. And these can often happen in the middle of a crowd or during a quiet lecture.
People with Tourettes have the exact same IQ as everyone else, but they can find it hard to accomplish some very simple things, like pouring a glass of milk. And they can find it more difficult to study and learn. Of course, the most difficult part is being treated as “a normal person”. Compared to other conditions, Tourettes can draw a lot more attention to itself, and that makes patients particularly vulnerable to discrimination, bullying, or doubt. A lot of people even thought they were possessed by a demon. They can have a hard time being understood or accepted.
Actually, this is not a super uncommon condition, especially among children. I’ve got lots of friends around me with kids who have even. Even Mr. Tang used to have similar symptoms in childhood—he would blink, twitch, or curse. And my MIL took him to the hospital to get diagnosed. I’ve seen studies that say almost 10% of school age children have experienced temporary tics, usually manifesting in the expressions, shoulders, blinking, or twitch of the fingers. These symptoms usually don’t last more than a year, and will disappear as stress levels go down or fatigue eases.
I wrote this big long piece so that people can start to understand these people. If you start hearing strange noises or see people with controllable tics, don’t stare at them, don’t point at them, keep doing what you were doing before. Don’t try to stop their tics, please be patient.
All these years, I’ve tried to make it a rule for myself that if I hear a baby cry, I shouldn’t look for the source unless I can actually offer some concrete help. That way, I can at least avoid putting more pressure on the mother. I think we should give the same consideration to the people who are forced to interrupt others because of their Tourettes. Maybe then, we can learn how to accept and welcome more diverse people among us.
More understanding means more kindness.”
Comments are mostly stories of people’s personal experience with having Tourettes, and everyone is being very friendly.
Underneath this post is another post, of someone posting a video of their kiddo with Tourettes, explaining, “Showing you what my son looks like. He doesn’t have the archetypical weird expressions or strange noises, it’s just a little wiggle of his head. I’ve sent this video to the doctor and gotten a diagnosis. I’ve seen a lot of other parents talk about all kinds of different tics.
I’m sharing this so people have a basic understanding of this condition, because it’s actually quite common. If your kiddo starts showing behaviour like this, don’t get mad at them or try to stop them. They can’t help it.
In the comments, the original poster emphasises, “I have no interest in Chinese medicine. Bring it up again and I’ll block you.”
A education blogger posts a submission by a reader, “I am using my personal, real experience to warn all unmarried women, to be careful getting married to divorced men with kids, especially boys! I’m currently divorced.
I met my ex-husband when I was 26-years-old. I had graduated uni by then and had been working a while. My life was pretty comfortable, aside from my parents pressuring me to marry. I was a little worried too, as everyone around me was married. But everyone that my friends introduced me to, I felt like wasn’t the right guy. When I went out with friends one time, I met my ex-husband, and felt like he was exactly what I was looking for.
I thought of myself as a modern, feminist woman, with no traditional biases. I knew he was divorced with a kid, and that his ex-wife had custody. I felt like I could accept that. And because I thought of myself as an independent woman, even if he had to pay 2000 RMB every month in child support, I felt like we could have more than enough to spare if we added our incomes together. My ex-husband worked at a nationalised company, I work middle-management in a private company, and made a little more than he did. Plus, he was humorous, romantic, and we agreed on all our values and ideals. After we had a fight and briefly broke up, we got back together more in love with each other than ever. Two years later, we were married.
Even now, I don’t doubt that he loves me. But after a lot of stuff happened, we started drifting further and further apart. A marriage can’t be built on just the excitement and thrill of love. You have to think about the practical everyday side of life too.
Because he worked in a nationalised company and I’m his second wife, plus his father hadn’t retired yet, they were worried that holding a big wedding would invite the wrong sort of gossip. So, we had a very simple wedding. I think most girls have dreamed about their wedding—a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. They want it to be beautiful and dreamy and perfect. Can you accept your wedding basically just looking like a normal family dinner night?
I wanted to get wedding photos by the sea side. I lived in a landlocked city all my life and have always dreamt about the sea. We could easily afford to go, but his last wedding photos were also taken by the sea side, and just that thought grossed me out. So we ended up getting local photos. Now every time I think about it, I get upset, so I’ve never even looked at my wedding photos again.
My ex-husband’s family was pretty well off, and the reason he got a divorce with his ex-wife is because her family got greedy and demanding. My FIL worked in government too, not retired yet, and my MIL is a doctor. With my ex-husband working in a nationalised company, his family was very upper middle class. But his ex-wife was pretty poor and was obsessed with her brother, so while she was married to him, she borrowed a lot of money from him on a lot of occasions to give to her brother. It all added up to over 800K. Later, when he started refusing to give her more, she started threatening divorce. She didn’t think he’d agree to it right away. At the time, their child was just 18 months old, so they agreed she’d have custody, she’d keep the house, and he’d pay 2K a month in child support. Before they separated, my FIL had arranged a chill but steady job for her, so she’s much more suited to child care. Because my husband is in line for a promotion, so he has to deal with a lot of networking events, and both of his parents are still working, so they didn’t fight for custody. They just agreed that he would visit once or twice a month.
After we got married, both my FIL and MIL retired. So every time visitation time came, the three of them would wake up early in the morning, clean up, pack up all the toys they’d bought, and leave. Why don’t I go with them? Well, I did at first. And every time I watch as they’re gathered around the ex-wife, talking about how the kiddo’s eating, what he’s learned, how much he’s grown, I just feel like I don’t belong, like I’m some passer by. So I stopped going. Because they’d given the marital house to the ex-wife, we were living with my FIL and MIL, hoping that with my savings and my ex-husband’s year end bonus, we could get a downpayment together for house in a good school district. So sometimes, when I sleep in on the weekends, I can hear the whole family get together, absolutely delighted to set off in the morning. And when I wake up, I see an empty house. Like I was some kind of live-in maid, and my employers had left for the day.
After we bought a house and moved into it, our relationship got a lot closer and warmer. My husband would still go to see his kid, but at least it wasn’t some kind of huge family event anymore. Or at least, I didn’t have to see it. But once I screwed up at work, caused a big mess, the whole day I was totally out of it. After I told my husband on wechat, he wanted to come over to see me at work and I told him not to. I was planning on getting home at night and just holding him and having a good cry, and then we can talk about what happened (even now, I can’t deny, he really was a mentor to me in some respects). When I came home that night, my husband had prepared for me a bathtub of hot water with rose petals in it, diffused my favourite lavender essential oils, and made my favourite cheese fried rice for dinner. He told me to take a good long soak, eat some food, and then we can chat. It was a house rule that we don’t talk about work at the dinner table. But at 9pm, after I was done eating and was just about to get into it, his ex-wife called. Said his kid was burning up with a fever. They were at the hospital, but because they don’t have any connections, they’re not able to skip the hours long line. She asked if my ex-husband can call his mom and see if she could get a coworker to let them skip the line. My husband kissed me, grabbed his coat, and left.
Was it his fault? He’d honestly did the best he could. But when he returned at 2am in the morning, I had no desire to share and expose my vulnerabilities anymore. The shoulders that I was going to lean on and cry into had already been leaned on and cried into by someone else. Can you accept what was meant to be your alone time being shared by someone else?
We didn’t fight that time, but I gave him the silent treatment for several days. A week after that, I started reflecting on myself. I felt like he didn’t really do anything wrong. So I bought his favourite steak, opened some wine, put on some lingerie that I was always too shy to wear, and planned to repair our relationship that night. And? What a coincidence. Another call from his ex-wife. The kid had gotten out of the hospital, only to have vomiting and diarrhoea that night. Even I could hear the kiddo screaming on the other end of the phone. This time, he didn’t even kiss me as he picked up his car keys and left. I cleaned up dinner, changed into my pyjamas, and went to bed.
It was all calm for a while, then I got pregnant. I mentioned before that I work at a private company—during my pregnancy, my income fell a lot. My family is a little less well off than his, but not by that much. And both of our parents are very healthy. But his mother started hinting that she doesn’t want to help with taking our kid. First, she’s wanting to enjoy her retirement time. Second, she still has PTSD from taking her first grandson. So I was going to ask my own parents for help. They’re both local, in the same city. But my dad had a sudden stroke—at least it wasn’t serious. But now I’m looking at sitting-the-month centres and nannies. At that time, all of my husband’s money was tied up in the stock market, and all of our savings had been spent in the down payment and furnishings, and we still needed to save money for my dad. Because I don’t want my FIL and MIL to think I’m the same as his ex-wife, I never asked for any financial help. So I did my best to save money. Since sitting the month centres and nannies are not cheap, to try to lessen the financial blow, I didn’t even buy my favourite crib option. I was spending all day on Taobao looking for cheaper alternatives. And that’s when he gives his ex-wife 10K RMB for his kid’s English tutoring classes. Maybe my pregnancy hormones got to me, but could you accept that?
This kind of thing went on constantly. I’ve tried communicating with him, but he said that that was his kid too. He can’t just ignore him. And it’s not like I would starve if he helped the other side too. But why do I have to be like a little IV bag, constantly dripping nutrient to his previous family?
I still remember after his promotion, we went on a celebratory vacation, and when we came back with souvenirs for my MIL, she teared up and said that her first grandson had never even travelled out of state. I still remember spending my own bonus to sign my daughter up for piano lessons, and when I encouraged her to play something for my FIL, he said he’s not into pretentious artsy fartsy shit like that. And then he turned around and said, “If only your ex-wife had money to sign our grandson up for Taekwondo.”
Honestly, my ex-husband and my in-laws aren’t bad to me, or else I wouldn’t have stayed married to him for seven years. But as soon as the grandson comes into the picture, everything I say and do is wrong. Is that their fault? That’s a child with their blood in his veins. Is it my fault? Why should my kid be treated differently just because her parents aren’t divorced?
I communicated, I set boundaries, I laid down rules. But if I could return to 8 years ago, I just wish that it would’ve never started. Love is necessarily selfish and possessive. Maybe you would be sad if you split up now, but you’ll only be sadder if you stayed.
Comments say, “Yeah, the key is, the other side has a boy.”
News reports that, “Experts claim it is just as hard to encourage people to have more kids as it was encouraging them to have less. On the 15th of April, the deputy director of the Family Planning Commission says that China’s birth rate is far too low, but it is very difficult raising the birth rate. Making people willing to have kids, to have lots of kids, to have high quality kids is just as difficult as making people have less kids. More difficult, even. He believes that China’s demographics are experiencing a very complicated and very impactful change, as last year, China’s population showed negative growth for the first time. The fight against an ageing population needs a lot of support, but there’s no need to overly stress about it. We cannot just copy the policies that work for high-income countries, and we cannot ignore the necessities needed for family and personal development. We need to find a plan that ensures long-term stable population growth and raises people’s health levels.” Attached is a poll asking people how many kids they want to have.
Comment say, “The one-child-policy was way too simplified and forceful and had been hammered into people’s bones over three decades. Trying to change now is too little too late. These commissions and these experts are at fault.”
“What, our citizens are like pigs in a pen? If there’s too many, drag a few out and castrate them. If there’s too few, start shooting them up with hormones?”
“For less kids, you can force abortions on people. What are you gonna do for more kids? Force inseminations on people?”
The QR code thing is clearly a joke.
The comments on the one-child policy are really on point. The problem is the people who think it's their right to decide how many kids other people can have in the first place.
And I guess everyone around the world has pretty similar conspiracy theories. It's always aliens or something.