A screenshot of a text exchange between a couple:
Husband: “No matter whose surname they take, they’re still the culmination of our love. They’ve got both our genes. Taking the father’s surname was a tradition for thousands of years for a reason. For example, making men take up responsibility.”
Wife: “Does giving undue rewards to an irresponsible person make them any more responsible?”
Husband: “The kiddo’s gonna come out of your tummy either way, you’ve gotta let me feel like I participated too. What, if they take my surname, they’re gonna somehow not be your kid anymore?”
Wife: “Then give me your pay check for next month. You couldn’t have this job without me. Even if the money isn’t yours anymore, you’ve still got the job. Shouldn’t that be enough? I didn’t get to participate in your work, so you gotta let me participate in getting the money, right?”
Comments say, “Taking the father’s surname is feudalism, but bride prices isn’t, because bride prices benefit me. I’ll talk about how I won’t do any housework after marriage and not have any kids and never cook, but I’ll also complain in the same breath about being a free nanny and maid, and that’s why men need to give me preferential treatment.”
“It’s like I poured my heart out into a paper, and you said you want to participate too so you want me to put your name on there.”
“You want to participate when it comes to naming the kid, but you won’t participate in taking care of the kid, picking out the formula, changing the diapers. “I’m busy with work” is a universal excuse, because “You had the kid”, so the woman has to do all the work involved with a kid. Not to mention, you assume that food gets on the table automatically and floors sweep themselves and clothes are cleaned by fairies.”
“I’m really worried right now that our current marital law system is going to result in a lot of short-term wins and a lot of long-term, horrendous losses. The people are more educated these days, people aren’t going to look at cases just for the gossip—they’re going to think about how it affects their lives.
Like, the case we recently had from the Supreme Court—the laws are very clear that if two people don’t have a marriage certificate between them and they split up, the man can get all of his bride price back. But the latest case from the Supreme Court involves a man who paid a bride price but never got a marriage certificate, instead living together with his partner for a while and had a kid with her.
When the case came out, most people on the internet were in support, they think it was a great judgement. From a moral point of view, yeah, they lived together like a couple for a long time, and they’ve got a kid together. If the judge ordered all of the bride price be returned according to the law, that’s clearly pretty unfair too. The judge made a good call.
But have you considered it from the man’s point of view? What he was thinking?
He probably only paid that bride price because he believed in our laws. Right now, the current phenomena is that wealthy men don’t want to get marriage certificates, and use the law to live together with a woman and have kids, so there’d be no marital assets. All he’s paying out is a bride price, and if she tries to leave, he can get all of it back.
They only paid the bride price because they believe in the laws. If they found that this law isn’t actually going to be enforced in reality, are they actually going to go get marriage certificates? Or are they going to stop paying bride prices entirely?
It’s just like the infamous prenup case a while ago. The man was from a very wealthy family, and the woman was a little poorer. She was a typical highly-educated woman coming to work at a big city from out of state. She got accidentally pregnant, and tried to force a shotgun wedding on the man, and so the guy got a lawyer and drafted up a pre-nup, saying that he’ll pay her 100K aper year so long as they’re married. And if they ever got divorced, he’ll pay her an amount equal to the number of years they were married times 100K. But none of his assets have anything to do with her.
And five years later, the two of them get a divorce over conflict about the kid’s education. The man wants to execute his prenup and pay the woman 500K and get split up with her. But now the woman’s not happy, because getting divorced means a drastic drop in standard of living for her. She told the judge in court that she only signed the prenup so that her kiddo would grow up in a complete family. She was coerced into it.
The prenup didn’t have any legal flaws in it. It’s just like the laws right now, written very clearly in black and white. So what is the judge supposed to do?
What would you do? Execute the prenup, or reject it?
Most of the judges in our country don’t take these prenups seriously. Like all the cases we’ve talked about before, the woman would probably win here. But why didn’t they promote this case like they’re doing now, to tell us how our laws actually work?
Because rich people aren’t dumb. As soon as they discover that prenups don’t actually mean anything, are they going to keep writing prenups and getting married, or just not get a marriage certificate at all?
Sure, you’ve won right now. But next time, other girls won’t even be invited to the table anymore, because her partner no longer believes in the rules the referee set.
I want everyone to consider these details carefully.”
Comments say, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t get a marriage certificate. I just saw a case yesterday, never got a marriage certificate, the judge ruled that the bride price should be returned. It was 136K in bride price originally, and the judge ruled she needed to return 25K of it lol.”
“When I was dealing with old cases in the countryside, an old village mayor told me something that’s always stuck with me, “The people will only let you fool them once.”
“Nah, it won’t matter. Most young guys I know are total simps. They’ll throw their life away for a bit of booty. They’ll hand over their parents’ life’s work to get a chance at creating descendants. There’s no exceptions. There’s plenty of people who are still desperate to get marriage.”
An askreddit question, “Why do all the countries around the world feel like they’re not afraid of America anymore?”
There’s a very long answer that boils down to, “Because people used to be scared of America declaring war on them, and after the Iraq and Afghanistan War, people have realised that America isn’t really capable of declaring war on anyone anymore. For example, they let China talk shit at them without doing anything. They didn’t do anything about the Russia-Ukraine War. They didn’t do anything about North Korea testing missiles. They didn’t do anything about Iran interfering in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Comments say, “Oh my god, stop bragging.”
“Basically, China’s rapid development has made America—or rather, the American military—not have any spare energy to interfere with any region’s conflict. And if they can’t lift a finger, then all they can do is hit other people’s fists with their own face.”
A tiktok video from overseas of someone discovering something wrong with their hotel room. The blogger reposting this writes, “What the hell kind of horror movie opening is this.”
Comments say, “Detective Conan: XX Hotel Murder Incident lol”
“I thought that was a nightview outside of the hotel room! I never thought it was just a print out!”
“This is an escape room that’s hotel-themed, isn’t it? The hidden passages are for NPCs to hide in.”
A compilation of screenshots of one-star reviews under the worst college majors, as voted on by internet citizens. [I am also super bad at translating major names. Just kinda…go with it.] It’s also not finished yet, so there are more than 10 candidates listed.
The list, in no particular order at all, is:
Scenic Garden Planning
“This year, an underclassman asked me what major I recommend for college, and I told her Scenic Garden Planning, but she didn’t listen to me. I really was super upset. I felt awful. Because I think everyone needs to be punched in the face by karma.”
2. Material Science and Engineering
“Tons of lessons and they’re all super hard, tons of experiments. Can’t get a job. The only upside is that you can get into a Master’s Degree pretty easily.”
3. Journalism
“A ton of involution in postgrad studies, but almost no job opportunities. You figure it out.”
4. Car Service Engineering
“What the fuck major is this even do you just graduate to wash cars and sell insurance or some shit? I don’t even want to give this one star. I switched majors in my sophomore year to Automotive Engineering instead.”
5. Environmental Design:
“You learn a bunch of muggle software, and make a bunch of stuff that looks pretty but will never happen in real life. The most tiring major in all the design majors, but you get the lowest pay when you graduate.”
“Just graduated, and got a job offer that pays 800 RMB a month, one day off a week, doing overtime every day.”
6. Business Management
”The fighter jet among garbage majors.”
“From experience, I can tell everyone that this shitty major just teaches whatever Americans came up with back in the 70s and they will literally never add anything new. Everything they teach about management was made up in the 70s. You’re better off just throwing yourself into a workplace and trial and error it. They need to cut the quota for this major by, like, 90%.”
7. Accounting
“If you’re a trust fund brat and you learn accounting, you can control the GDP. If you’re a poor prole and you learn accounting, you’ll go through a lot of calculators.”
“This is what accounting is like: graduate and get paid 2000 RMB a month, work from 8AM to 6PM, and never actually get off of work on time, have to pass Beginner Accounting, Accounting, CPA tests. Have to learn like 6 books inside and out, and one of them has 800 pages. And your license is only good for 5 years. Earn the least amount of money but sweat the most amount of bullets. Go half-blind looking at excel sheets every day. And everyone in your company is signing contracts they’re not supposed to and never getting the receipt that they are supposed to, and if anything at all goes wrong, you’re the one who goes to jail. You’ll work at matching up the books from morning to night and always, always find yourself one cent fucking short ahhhhhhhhhhhh T_T”
8. Hotel Management:
“I don’t understand this major. Do you have to have a degree just to work the front desk these days?”
9. International Economics and Commerce:
“I’m a STEM guy and I fucking chose this major because I’m a retard and now my life’s ruined.”
“Fuck, can’t believe I had to learn by experience. I will laugh my ass off if anyone else picks this major.”
10. Investing
“Investing your mom! There’s no point in studying at all, except that you put yourself at more risk of bankruptcy.”
“Rest assured, none of your teachers have any idea what they’re doing with their portfolios either.”
11. Civil Engineering
“I think they had this major back in the day too. I think it was called corvée.”
12. Chemical Engineering and Craftsmanship (?)
“You should all pick this major. Then, when you don’t have time for your girlfriends anymore, I’ll take care of her for you.”
13. Tourism Management
“As soon as you go out in society, you’ll get owned.”
“Why does this even exist as a Bachelor’s degree? Why can’t we throw this into the technical colleges too?”
14. Engineering Management
“I was wondering why I couldn’t find you after civil engineering, and here you are. Management. I’ll manage your ***, you ****, who can you **** ****.”
“What is this “management” doing here? Just hurry up and fuck off back to civil engineering where you belong.”
Comments say, “I can’t believe English Major isn’t up there.”
“I won’t acknowledge this list if Psychology isn’t on it.”
“There’s no Pharmaceutical Sciences???”
“How horrible! Their mother died young and their father disappeared, and two little kids are digging in the trash cans of Shenzhen looking for food.
On the 9th of December, on a street in Guangdong, a man saw two homeless children sleeping by the side of the street. Their clothes were dirty, and they were only two or three years old. They looked exhausted, like they hadn’t eaten for days.
This kind man briefly questioned them and learned that these kiddos’ mother passed away when they were young, and they don’t have grandparents either. Their only family was their father, but he suddenly disappeared half a month ago, and they don’t know where he is right now. So they were forced to wander the streets, suffering the weather, entirely alone. The younger kiddo was hungry and tired, and is laying against a black garbage bag. The older kid was sitting to the side, helplessly watching his brother. But there’s nothing he can do. No one knows how these kiddos made it for the past half a month, but it’s probably by scavenging for food.
The man bought some snacks for the kids and called the police, hoping these poor kids can get settled down somewhere. Why did their father disappear? Did he heartlessly abandon these cute kiddos? Or did he suffer some kind of accident? Right now, we have no idea!”
Comments say, “Now the Minor Protection Law is absolutely useless.”
“Why is this not pinned at the top of trending posts? We’re getting bombarded with pointless celebrity bullshit every day. Shouldn’t we be paying more attention to societal news like this??”
“What the fuck are the local Women’s Federation and street office doing!?”
“I’ve seen a ton of videos of people vacationing in Dongbei, eating steel pot stew, and they always go for goose first. I really don’t recommend people who haven’t tried goose before going right to goose as a hell challenge.
Goose has a very, very, very gamey meat for poultry. At least 60% my Dongbei peers that I know don’t even eat goose themselves.
If you eat goose as your first thing, you might think the whole genre of steel pot stews aren’t for you. Like, they’re just bad.
I’ve seen Nicholas Tse go to Harbin before and get a steel pot stew with goose and fish. I told all my Dongbei friends about this story, and everyone says they can’t imagine how gamey and fishy that stew would be.
I suggest you start with tendon stew or rib stew, plus some clear noodles with green beans, and some steamed twisted rolls. It’s so fucking good.”
Comments say, “I love tendon stew! The texture is just amazing!”
“Roast goose leg is super popular in Beijing right now, and it’s not gamey at all.”
“Ribs + chicken feet is the best.”
“I’ve eaten stewed goose and it’s not gamey at all. It doesn’t taste like much at all, tbh, it’s just a little firmer than normal chicken. A little chewier.”
How is that bragging?
The comments on majors reminded me of a particular XKCD, titled "Every Major's Terrible": https://xkcd.com/1052/
Worth a read if you get the references (or are willing to look them up).