[I’m still traveling in Canada right now (it’s beautiful, btw), and between all the sightseeing we want to do and hauling two kids along, I just don’t think I can do an FAQ right now, so December’s FAQ is going to be delayed until I’m back in the States on the 5th of December. I’m really sorry for all these changes lately.
I’ve also noticed a problem with my blogging, that I tend to do it at the same time every day, and I explicitly don’t curate content. This means that several times, during other times of the day, I’ve come upon really interesting and exciting posts that don’t exist anymore by the time I settle down to do my blogging at night. How do people feel about a once a week thing, where I cover stuff that I came upon that I thought was interesting, but never made it into the daily roundup?]
Someone asks, “Why is Australia fighting so hard with China right now?”
The reply this blogger screenshotted says, “First, I need to answer an unrelated question. It’s true that a lot of bottom class people in Australia are very naive, sure, but the powerful elites aren’t dumb. Most of them aren’t going to sacrifice anything real for vague memetic ideas like Anglo-Saxon blood or religion or politics. This is just motivational slogans, and an excuse to buddy up with England and America. The reality is, there’s been a huge conflict of interest between China and Australia.
A lot of the highly-upvoted replies failed to mention the fact that Australia has its own dreams of becoming a superpower too. I mean, you can call them deluded, but Australia really does have the ambition to become a major superpower, and their main strategy is to turn Oceania and South-East Asian island countries into their sphere of influence, and make New Zealand a tributary state of theirs. You can see it clearly.
Before, China had its head down and was growing low-key, building infrastructure, and as a major ore and energy exporter, they made tons of money off their natural resources, while taking advantage of China’s cheap manufacturing to bring down their own inflation, plus attracting tons of Chinese people to study overseas and make money there. So overall, our economic and political relations have been great. Despite political pressure from America, at most, Australia would just join in chanting the slogan, but never do anything proactively.
That was until 2012, when the political winds in Australia changed. It was the turning point of Chinese-Australian diplomatic relationships. The biggest thing that happened in China that year was: [OP inserts a photo of China’s aircraft carrier here].
This bad boy went into service, taking us to the blue water. That made the political elite in Australia alarmed. Of course, everyone knew about China’s plans to build an aircraft carrier. At first, Australia’s elite thought it was meant for Taiwan and Japan, so they were wary, but not really hostile yet.
Here, we have to bring up Lee Hsien Loong in Singapore.
Although he’s not nearly as politically savvy as his dad, he’s got a pretty accurate grasp of China’s strategic intentions. He was the earliest to realise that our diplomatic strategy is to defend in the east and attack to the south. We want to take advantage of the divide that’s grown between South East Asia and America due to the financial crisis, plus how America’s tied up in the middle east, and South East Asia’s military power is temporarily shrinking, to pull South East Asia into our fold.
When he took over and solidified his power, the very first thing he did was to desperately grab onto America and make them return to the Asia-Pacific. From his position, it didn’t matter how much Singapore relied on China economically, it had to rely on America when it came to safety. But at the time, America was too busy and completely ignored him. They totally promised and swore they’d return to the Asia-Pacific, but never did anything concrete.
The time comes to 2014, and another big event drew international attention.
China began building artificial islands in its South Sea. That drew America’s attention in particular, and for a moment, the whole world’s attention was on this event. Everyone in South East Asia was holding their breath, waiting to see America’s triumphant return, its beatdown on China, bombing those artificial islands back to the bottom of the ocean. But America really just rushed over, took a look around, left some stern words, and then left again. Nothing actually changed. That was devastating to everyone. And that’s when Lee realised that in this region, America wasn’t the only faction in charge anymore. And he immediately adjusted his diplomatic strategy, from being completely pro-America, to sucking up to both sides and relying on neither. After the Philippines vs China case, America only offered verbal support, but no actual aid. And with the election of Trump, it made South East Asia start coming over to China’s side.
By this point, China was having very obvious conflicts with Australia’s national strategy, and that caused a whole bunch of personnel moves among Australia’s elites. Everyone friendly to China all got kicked out one by one. Especially when people realised how close South East Asia was to China now, people who were vehemently anti-China got more and more support.
The reality is, Australia’s been setting up their game in South East Asia for years. They have some foundation there. They figured that they’d take advantage of this opportunity if America was too busy to handle the issue, but now China’s squeezing in on their territory. Not like they could just give up on decades of work like this. Plus, internal opinions are more or less in agreement. If they don’t fight China, they’d lose their own base of support, and they’ll get pulled down by their political rivals. Just to keep their job, they had to go on the offensive. That’s why Australia’s flipping out so much. I’m sure that even the Australian elite themselves realise, that if Lee wasn’t able to persuade America to come help with all his reasoning and analysis, they’re not gonna be able to talk America into coming to help with just their noble Anglo-Saxon bloodline.
And yet, they’re still faced with one question, and they only have one answer. What can they do?
Of course, it’s not like China has a lot of choices either. We need to expand outwards for more space, and to the north is Russia, and to the west are all the Central Asia -stan countries which is basically Russia’s garden, and it’s impolite to squeeze in on our teammate’s territory. In South Asia, there’s an Indian bro who wants to become a superpower too, who’d never willingly join China. So there’s only East Asia and South East Asia remaining. And as for East Asian, they’re too economically well off, and America is a lot more heavily invested there. America very much directs the politics there. Plus, at the end of the day, it’s just two shitty little islands. It’s too hard of a battle for too little reward. South East Asia is weak, and had distrust with America, and we don’t have to invest too much in taking it over, so of course we’d pick South East Asia as our first step. If Australia’s pissed off about it, then sucks to be them.”
Comments say, “Australia’s big and full of resources. We could consider taking them over too.”
“How much do you make?”
“Pretty sound logic here.”
“Aftermath to my cousin-in-law’s story.
He died the same way as his brother. The very next day after getting divorced from my cousin.
Because of his unhappy childhood, after his daughter was born, he made it a big point to make sure she grew up in a chill, free, loving environment. He raised his daughter to be opinionated and talented all the way through high school. No matter what decision she made, he and my cousin supported her unconditionally.
For her college entrance exam, she got into a 211 University [one step below Ivy] with great grades, to study Finance. Her dream was to become an actuary.
The latter half of 2019, just after they sent their daughter off to university, he and my cousin talked about improving their living standards and buying a second house, renting their current one. You have to pay a lot more for your downpayment for a second house, so as they were debating the decision, my cousin-in-law’s parents showed up, and asked them to go persuade his sister-in-law to give up her daughter’s custody rights, and let him adopt her, and they’ll pay for her living expenses.
They’ve got two main reasons:
His sister-in-law might be re-marrying soon, so her daughter’s probably gonna take her new dad’s surname. If that’s so, their younger son’s lineage would end.
My cousin-in-law raised a great daughter, so he’ll probably do a good job raising his niece too.
They refused this demand right away. My cousin-in-law listed three reasons to try to persuade his parents:
It’s best for his niece to be with her bio-mom, no matter what her surname is. That’s going to provide her with the best environment for growing up.
He’s got no grounds to talk to his sister-in-law about this, since his parents are the reason his brother died [they drove him to suicide through being over controlling, as covered in a previous post]
His niece is right in her rebellious teenager phase right now, and he has no confidence or energy to raise her well, not to mention focus on her education.
So these old people went back to their old tricks, and showed up at my cousin-in-law’s workplace to make a scene, crying and cursing and drawing a crowd in the lobby. It got the boss’s attention too (they’ve done this a couple of times before; any time their son tries to stand up to them, they do this shit).
My cousin and her husband had been working at this place for near 20 years. All their coworkers know how his parents are, and they get it. Whenever they see his parents, they all dodge them and don’t make any contact. But the boss couldn’t put up with these old people throwing a fit in his lobby every day, and was worried that some passerby is going to film it and put it on the internet and damage the company’s image, so he pressured my cousin-in-law to deal with it quickly.
So my cousin and her husband talked it out and decided to get a divorce. First, it’ll be easier to buy a second house that way. And secondly, maybe divorce papers would shut them up.
The day they got their divorce papers, my cousin-in-law put my cousin on a train to Nanjing, to have her stay with her sister for a while, so his parents can’t bother him.
As soon as he got home, he put the divorce papers in front of his parents and told them that he’s single now, his wife has custody of his daughter. As a single man, there’s no way he can adopt his niece, and therefore he has no right to fight his sister-in-law for custody of his daughter.
His parents were right pissed off by what he did. They fought with him until 11PM that night before going home. Around midnight, after seeing his parents off, my cousin-in-law even called up my cousin and told her to remember to stay warm as Nanjing is getting very cold, and praised her for her brilliant idea of a divorce. He believed that his parents would stop tantrumming after a couple of days.
Early next morning, my cousin-in-law was woken up by someone banging on his door. His parents were standing outside, absolutely furious.
It’s still the same topic. His parents said that no matter what the reason, my cousin-in-law was the only son right now. They didn’t have kids just for someone to take care of them in their old age, but they expect the basic level of filial piety, and even went into the semantics, that filial piety meant obedience [孝顺—顺 meaning obedience]. They even threatened that if he wouldn’t obey them, they’d go make a fuss at his daughter’s university.
This time, my cousin-in-law didn’t say a word. He just picked up a jacket and left. His parents figured he’d went to work, so they stayed at his place and watched TV, waiting to continue the argument when he came home for lunch.
Not long after, they heard a commotion down stairs, and went to take a look on the balcony, and found that someone had apparently fallen off the building opposite theirs. They went down just to get in on the gossip, and saw their son laying in a pool of blood, just like their younger son had a couple of years ago.
My cousin didn’t get a call until that afternoon. When she was told her husband was gone, they had to repeat it three times before she believed it wasn’t some trick made up by his parents. And by that time, it had barely been 30 hours since she got her divorce papers.
Afterwards, when my cousin was going through his belongings, she found the letter and diary he’d left behind.
In the letter, he said that he’d had depression for years, and was coping with it with his happy family, and it would get worse whenever he had to face his parents. And for decades, he’d live like this, torn between two realities. Before he got a divorce, he thought that he might fight against his parents like this one day, just so his wife and daughter would be able to survive. He just didn’t know that that day would be so close.
If he had any other solution at all, if his parents even once thought about things from his point of view, they wouldn’t have lost two sons this way.”
The comments are full of nothing but, “O_O” and “Oh my god!”
A tiktok video of a man making some amazing-looking fried noodles for 15 RMB. It has meat, sausage, garlic, pickled green beans, chili peppers, various veggies, and secret sauce. Apparently, the cook here is the WB World Fried Noodle Champion, and the thick necklace of beads around his neck is his Championship Belt.
Comments say, “It’s true that men are the most suited to cooking. I couldn’t even lift that wok.”
“At first, I thought 15 was super expensive. By the end, I couldn’t believe what a great deal it is.”
“I don’t even care what’s in it. I’d pay 15 RMB just to watch this guy cook.”
A blogger give screenshots of someone explaining what the CCP means when it promotes positive energy posts: “I’ll give a really easy to understand example, to show you what “positive energy weibo” looks like. If I post a picture of a janitor sweeping the streets, and I caption it, “Janitors have it hard! Everyone, upvote her hard work!” And you gave my weibo post an upvote, and I got money from my viewership count, and the janitor got absolutely nothing, that’s a positive energy post.
But if I post a janitor sweeping the streets, and I caption it, “City janitors are still not getting paid. Who can help them?” And then my account gets banned with an additional explanation that, “The information is untrue, local government has paid all delayed wages at this time.” That’s a negative energy weibo.”
And the blogger comments, “It’s sad that most people don’t know about deflation. They just hear, “don’t buy houses, don’t go into debt”.”
Comments say, “The phrase “positive energy” was created by rapist Song Shanmu. He was a private training agency for computer fluency. While raping his female subordinates, he’d say, “There’s too much negative energy in your body. I need to inject some positive energy into it.””
“I don’t know about the second half, but I’ve always wanted to say something like the first half. A lot of influencer accounts will post about really great people and then follow it up with, “Don’t be stingy with your upvotes!” And then a lot of people really will upvote it, so these influencers make money. I mean, what’s it got to do with the actual heroes here?”
“Honestly, everyone’s paying more attention to people who are whining nowadays. You see a lot more of the second scenario, like, “Wow, janitors have it hard. Does everyone have it this hard?” And then the person who post that gets a lot of upvotes. Nobody cares about positive energy posts anymore.”
A compilation of the most unexpected income people’s made:
“Bought some ice cream and won a prize. It’s a car worth 50K.”
“I was going to quit my job, but then they laid me off and paid me five figures in compensation XD”
“Got bored watching a movie and dug 200 RMB out of my seat cushion.”
“Found a guy to game with online, just some guy with a nice voice playing on the Chinese server, and it turned out to be a trust fund brat studying overseas. Gave me 40-50K on a whim.”
“I’d only met my Honour of Kings co-op buddy for two days when I dropped my phone and broke it. Told him I couldn’t play for the next couple of days, and he sent me 6K right away and told me to go get a new phone. I was shocked.”
“I got pulled into a group chat by a scammer, where they were giving out big red pockets, so I’d take all the red pockets that they sent. Then they started giving out missions, for people to scan their QR code and pay money. I got about 200 RMB out of them and dropped from the group. I figure everyone in there was a scammer but me.”
“The next table over were having a heated argument, and the very moment I poked my head over to check it out, I got hit in the face by a beet bottle. Made 12K that day.”
“I got scammed out of 200K two years ago and I’d completely forgotten about it. My friend suddenly brought it up, and I went to the police station and reported it. Within a week, the scammer refunded me 200K plus 50K interest.”
I would be happy for you to devote one of your posts each week to various items you have come across that didn't make it into the daily roundup. Thanks!
Is "Pretty sound logic here." sarcastic?
What does "How much do you make?" have to do with anything?