[We’ve confirmed our Christmas plans, and I don’t think I’ll be making an update on the 24th, Christmas Eve. I’ll wish everyone a preemptive Merry Christmas here!]
“Is it embarrassing to dress my kid this way?
I didn’t buy any winter clothes this year for my kid. This is some old clothes I got off of my husband’s aunt’s child. This is my kid’s only winter coat for this winter, and when he went outside today, he fell and tore a hole in the coat and some fluff fell out. I only have 400 RMB left this month, so I can’t buy him a new coat, so I thought I’d just patch it up. But he often gets his clothes dirty, and every time I launder it, more fluff falls out. And there’s a really obvious patch on the coat. Is that super embarrassing for a 2.5 year old kid? I showed my husband the coat, wanting him to give me some money to buy a new one, but he hasn’t been paid yet. He said since our kid doesn’t go out much, he can just deal for now. I’m pretty helpless too.
We’re a family with a lot of debt and not a lot of help. I can’t abandon the kid and go work. As for why we had a kid even though life was so difficult, we weren’t in debt yet when we had him…”
Comments say, “Is no one going to tell her the truth?”
“Buy one of these patches and stick it on. They’re super cheap!”
“It’s fine. Toddler are always super hard on their clothes. It’s pretty often that you have to patch it up. With your finances as they are, there’s no need to pretend to be richer than you actually are. If you’ve only got 400 RMB to live on, like, to be blunt, that’s even less than what uni students get. You’re only barely a step away from starving. The important thing right now isn’t to post on the internet and satisfy your desire to have your complaints heard. You need to work on making money.”
“Over 20 people have tried on this coat today, and all walked away when I told them it cost 595 RMB. Is 595 RMB for a winter coat really that expensive?”
Comments say, “I went to a boutique the other day, and the sales there smugly told me a pair of jeans was 298 RMB, no haggling. Then I went to a department store and found the exact same pair of jeans for 268 RMB. I don’t get why stores are more expensive than malls.”
“595 is a bit much for a short coat. I’d pay it if it was knee-length of something.”
“It depends on where you’re selling it. If this is at a specialty store, I’d think it was pretty cheap. If it’s an unbranded store [where cheap clothing of all kinds of brands are sold instead of just one brand], then I’d think it’s very cheap. Also, I’d never buy winter coats from an unknown brand.”
“Don’t buy down jackets. I work in clothing, and the waters in the down jacket field is just too murky right now. Unless you’re buying from a very famous brand, you’re better off just getting a cotton-padded jacket.”
“The most tragic case of old people I’ve ever heard.
A couple, in the 80s, both very educated. The old man is the former headmaster of a top university. The old lady is a teacher too.
They’ve got a son who’s very accomplished. Studied overseas in America back in the day and stayed there. The old couple remained in China and took care of themselves, empty nest old people.
A couple of years ago, the old man got a stroke and became paralysed in bed, and lost most of his verbal capabilities. His wife has been taking care of him since.
One day, his wife had a sudden heart attack and passed out at home. The old man was stuck in bed, unable to speak or move, unable to help her or help himself. And he starved to death on that bed. It took a long time for their neighbours to discover something wrong and call the police. When the police went in there, it was an absolutely horrid sight.
Another old professor had a daughter who went to live overseas. His wife passed away a few years back, and he spent the last years of his life in a retirement home. The last few months of his life he spent in the hospital, and his daughter never came back to see him. Only a couple of nurses took care of him. And no one ever checked up on their work, so they didn’t take proper care of him either. If anything came up, they just tried to make it each other’s responsibility. He had no quality of life or dignity to speak of. When he died, he was skin on bones and had tears at the corner of his eyes.
In both of these cases, the old people were wealthy, had wives, and had children. But the end of their life was still filled with helplessness and pain. You can see how difficult it is to solve the problem of elder care.
You can’t think too hard about cases like these. It makes even young people like me feel kind of sad and lost.”
Comments say, “You raise geniuses for America. You raise idiots for yourself. So I don’t feel stressed out about raising my children at all.”
“If their children so much as called them every day, it wouldn’t have taken that long for someone to notice something was wrong.”
“This happens a lot in family units in top universities. In the end, it’s always an old couple (or just an old person by themselves) hiring a nanny, who pushes them out into the yard every morning, and the old people chat with each other while the nannies gossip among themselves.”
There’s a tiktok video of a takeout delivery driver with a strong dialectic accent, calling someone and getting their AI assistant instead, who speaks with such perfect mandarin that the takeout driver starts subconsciously copying the AI in trying to speak mandarin too (badly). It’s funny, but I’m not sure the humour would be useful to anyone here. Nevertheless, I’ll leave a video here, for those of my audience who understand Chinese:
Comments say, “My friend’s AI picked up a call for him, and it was about a package he’d ordered, and the AI asked the other guy, “Will I become a hottie if I use this?””
“The takeout driver is all like, “Is he a radio host or a news caster? This is so awkward what do I do~””
“Around last year, I just learned how to make AI pick up my calls for me, and I could even have it imitate my voice. Then my mom called me and I didn’t pick up the call in time, so my AI was all like, “Hello, I’m XXX’s voice assistant.” And my mom is like, “[My real name], are you trying to fuck with me?””
“A lot of bougies don’t understand that the real purpose of the death sentence is to cut off the chain of revenge. If there’s no death sentence, then if you kill someone of mine, then I’ll kill someone of yours, and it’ll keep repeating for generations on end, until one of our clans is wiped out.
After the death sentence, revenge is something that’s carried out by the government, and that cuts of the chain of revenge. That’s the biggest value to the death sentence.
And now, the western legal world has invented a ridiculous legal notion that’s been spreading throughout the world thanks to some people’s political interests, talking about how the death penalty is pointless, that punishments need to fit the crime, or even some bullshit about how no one has the right to take other people’s lives, not even the government.
Okay, so if there’s no death sentence for killing people, isn’t that just encouraging the victim’s family to carry out justice themselves?”
Comments say, “I don’t mind abolishing the death sentence, but no one whose crime would’ve qualified for death should ever have an opportunity for sentence reduction. They just have to sit in prison until they die.”
“The death penalty really isn’t appropriate, because for some people, death isn’t enough. We need to be able to sentence people to drawing and quartering, disembowellment, burning at the stake, or whatever.”
“Forgiving criminals is just further hurting victims.”
A parody tiktok video from America about what will happen if tip culture continued getting worse:
Comments say, “I mean, it’s not far from that. At least, you really need to tip for takeout.”
“It’s super annoying, but at least costs are relatively low compared to income. A nice steakhouse in Manhattan is only 100 USD for four people, and you need to pay well over 1000 RMB for some proper steak in Beijing.”
“Isn’t the core of capitalism money anyhow?”
In the wake of the earthquake, a store in Gansu has been cooking 2000 pounds of dumplings, from 4PM nonstop to deep in the night, so everyone can get fed. Cars are parking around the disaster zone and keeping their brights on for rescue workers to see better.
Comments say, “Everyone works together like this every time there’s a major disaster, helping out however they can. It’s so touching T_T”
“I’ve only just started working and haven’t made much money yet, but I’ve lived in Gansu for four years and I want to do whatever I can for them to help them through this difficult period.” [attaches screenshot of a 100 RMB donation]
“This is what our company donated.” [photo of a truck with a “Go Gansu!” banner on it.]
An askreddit question, “Why is the everyone on the internet talking about the fall of America? Is America really failing now?”
The top reply is, “Because you didn’t know how strong and terrifying America was back in the day.
America was so strong back then, that it was despair-inducing. To the point that no one even knew what to do.
In 1994, their aircraft carriers can follow China’s nuclear subs into the Yellow Sea. Do you know where the Yellow Sea is? It’s practically close to our inner sea already!
In 1996, a couple of their EA6 Prowlers could control half of China’s air-defense network, and the Chinese airforce didn’t even have electronic warfare planes at all, nor any kind of advanced command system. It’s all semi-automatic, in Beijing. At the time of the Taiwan Sea crisis, a lot of people were urging us to go to war, but how? It’s a question of how many planes we can even keep in the air at the time. We couldn’t even keep up with the American military from the 60s. A couple of 60s era USS Forrestals and USS Kitty Hawks plus some F4s and we would’ve been wiped out. It’s true. China in the 90s couldn’t win against America in the 60s.
That was America’s most reckless era. They could beat up whoever they wanted to. They could bomb wherever they wanted to. Among the five countries on the UN Security Council, Britain’s always been America’s bitch. France’s been betrayed by America three times when it came to the European Union, from the Srebrenica massacre to Kosovo, and they even took advantage of the Kosovo war to fuck with China. As for Russia, forget them. They’ve been screwed by America from the late 80s to this day. Look how many lives Russia threw away in Grozny.
Even in the 21st century, they took out a J-8II in the South Sea 20 years ago.
As for Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, what the fuck are they. They’re just a couple of pawns America uses to throw at other major countries.
Then, 9/11 came. America fought the War on Terror for over a decade, until the modern day.
In that day and age, under despair, even when people are writing novels, when it comes to fighting America, the only victory they could imagine is inventing some kind of sci-fi magical technology, and sacrificing half of China to achieve a pyrrhic victory against America. It was the only hope they could see.
That was America’s strength at the time. An incomparable, insurmountable giant. Just four F15s could form an indestructible wall over the Persian Harbour. 15 aircraft carriers controlled the world’s seas. They can do a couple of modifications on WWII era ships and there’s nothing 99% of the countries on earth could do about it.
And now? Now America’s talking about how they can deal with China’s super-sonic-speed weaponry. How they can use their destroyers to fight 055s. How they can not fall behind China when it comes to R&D-ing new weapons.
How is that not failing?
The discussion on this over the years is pretty clear.
90s — no one even dreamed of defeating America.
00s — the only way people can imaging defeating America is with sci-fi technology.
10s — maybe we can win, but only in another couple of decades. America’s at their height rigt now.
20s — When is America gonna fall to infighting?”
Comments say, “Maybe we should worry more where food is going to come from tomorrow. According to the evening news, haven’t we surpassed America a long time ago?”
“None of my business.”
“It’s not that America’s failing, it’s that China is rising.”
“Sexist people love to claim that they “were thinking about it”. Normal people who fail to think of things just don’t bother and split everything evenly among their children. As for bedrooms in the house, just stick a kid in each bedroom and stop wasting brain cells on this.
There are some who like to play favourites, who might spend a little more time thinking about it. The might give most of their estate to their son, they might put their sons in the bigger bedroom. But only people who way overthink it would ever come up with a plan to remodel a bathroom into a child’s room. Who the hell could’ve ever come up with such a thing? I’m sure that remodelling company was baffled.”
Comments say, “I believe she didn’t think about it. She just followed her heart. She really truly believes in her heart that her daughter doesn’t deserve a proper room.”
“My mom passed away, and my uncle said that my brother is going to decide what kind of urn we get for her. Get someone to carry the flag at her funeral, and they skip over me to give it to my brother. The monk pours wine, then lifts his head and as soon as he sees I’m a girl, he turns away right away. When the divinationist tossed his dice, he did it for my brother, then my uncle, then my uncle-in-law, then my uncle’s children. When it came to a memorial photo, they said I didn’t need to be involved since I’m a girl, and my brother can’t deal with it until he’s married. There’s no justice. Everything is calculated. And even on the funeral, they took time to try to talk me into finding a man.”
“All the people talking me into having kids are saying that I have to have a son. I can’t put up with it anymore. Even if my husband was sexist, I wouldn’t have a problem with getting rid of him and raising my daughter alone, not to mention a bunch of relatives I barely know. This is the best time to flip out at everyone. My daughter still doesn’t know what “sexism” even means right now, or what favouritism is. I work hard so that she never has to experience these things in her home.”
Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones!
Happy Christmas in advance, Moly and family!