Making Mother's Day about Men / Trans Woman only wanting Cis Women / Drag Saves Lives

"Only on the internet can a man try to make Mother's Day about himself"
"Happy mother's day. Today I was told I'm not a mother. My wife told me you wont steal this day from me and it really hurt so to all trans woman out or not, who have kids, adopted or not, happy mother's day, this day is for all of us even if we can't celebrate the way we want. Try to treat yourself and enjoy today as the real woman that you are."

"Amanda 27
Woodburn
Lesbian Trans Woman
Lives in Portland
26 miles away
Looking for Long-term partner
About Me: I'm just sorta here to see if I magically find someone. Not into smokers/vapers, single moms, not poly, won't date other trans or guys or women pretending to be men. Cat lover/owner is a plus. Allergic to dogs. Natural born women only please"

*Man with blonde mullet and pink sports shoes in spandex saying "drag saves lives"*

Links - 9th June 2023 (1 - History Extra Quoting)

15 minutes of fame: rediscovering forgotten figures | HistoryExtra - "‘The past is not a sort of slightly dressed up version of the present with funny hats but actually a very different sort of mental world… this is just the 1940s but I've been reading the diaries of a young revolutionary woman called Yu Yuenjin [sp?] and she had a interesting and uh ultimately I think quite fulfilling life but it was quite turmoil written in the 1940s because she was simultaneously a young woman in her early 20s during the period when Mao's Revolution, the revolution that would lead to the Communist victory in in China was um uh going on, and she was a performer actually in an entertainment troupe  attached to the Chinese Army at that time. And she did historians the great service of keeping a diary and it's absolutely fascinating. And lots of the things that are in there well I think sound very familiar to any teenager today. She worries about um the fact that she's you know she thinks she's overweight. She worries about the fact that she doesn't think her, you know she's got some body shame issues we would say today, she also used that phrase but you know all sorts of things but she's very frank in the diary about, she's jealous of certain other people who have nicer you know material goods than she does um and um all sorts of things that you know don't don't sound very out of place today. But the element that is singly most responsible for reminding any reader now that this is a different time is that she expresses almost all of these sentiments and emotions in language that is shaped almost entirely by Marxism. So when she complains to herself about the fact that she's spending too much thinking about makeup, she says what I need to do is make sure I develop a more proletarian point of view. Or when she thinks she might be sort of spending too long looking at you know magazines with pictures of movie stars which are a big thing in 1940s China as they were in 1940s America or Britain, she says I must try and get rid of my petty Bourgeois view of uh of of life. And some of these things are very homely and one of the examples from a different diary actually from a man, but it's such a great quote that I have to give it to you is at the end of a long session struggling with himself to see whether he can get that kind of um proletarian identity through working through the Communist party and the Communist Army, he says, this is the problem with Bourgeois thoughts. It's like the stinky stuff beneath your, between your toes. It's really hard to scrub it away. And the combination of the sort of the Holiness of a metaphor that we, well those who have cleaner toes than me probably wouldn't recognize but nonetheless you have some recognition of that, combined with a world view which is shaped by revolutionary Marxism in a way that's actually just very unfamiliar. Even today’s China which of course is a Communist country but people don't tend to talk that way in today's China and they certainly don't tend to in in most of Britain and America. That's the kind of thing that looking at that sort of Life Source, a diary in this case, can do for a historian to remind you about there's there's two conflicting elements: what's very familiar and what's very different’...
'Kit Heyam has a great new book coming out called before we were trans and they talk about how previously historians have taken essentially a straight lens to the past. So the assumption is that people are straight unless as *something* was saying you can definitely prove that they were something else and why should we assume straightness in the absence of evidence?'"
Why assume historical figures were human, had two hands with five fingers each and were not time travellers from the future? In the absence of evidence we cannot assume anything!

Pearl Harbor episode 2: America on the eve of war | HistoryExtra - "‘The US as a neutral in the two conflicts in Europe and Asia, up until the end of 1941. But that is absolutely not to say that it didn't have if you want, a dog in the fight. The US had great sympathy in the case of the European theater with Great Britain. And in the case of the Asian theater with China. There are some reasons that the United States has this strong sympathy for China. On the one hand, it's a little bit surprising, because Japan has a larger economy. And so the US and Japan are each other's third largest trading partners, they have really strong business ties. So there's really a good reason to think that there's a closeness between the two. But at the same time, there's really a groundswell of support from public opinion, but also from the government, for China. And some of that is because of the huge market potential of China, if China becomes more developed, think of all the things that we could sell, is a popular idea amongst American industry at the time. And then the idea of small r republicanism. So the idea that nationalist China is something like an early version of the United States, a country that's going to be independent of a monarchy, they hadn't thrown off the imperial system in 1911, and is really going to be something kind of as an American style democracy. And so that, and also, the success of American missionaries in China lead to all of these sentiments of the Chinese as being “kind of like us”, from an American perspective. For example, there's a woman called Pearl S Buck, and she wrote a book called The Good Earth, which was based on her experiences as an American missionary, and it's quite a sympathetic account of Chinese peasants. And that book got made into a movie in 1937, the year that a war between China and Japan broke out. And that movie won several Academy Awards. It was really popular, and it really drummed up a sense of public sympathy for the Chinese’...
'This allegiance with China left the US in a tricky position. Because despite wanting the Chinese to win the war, the Americans were a central trading partner supplying their enemies, the Japanese. In effect, US trade was enabling a war that it believed to be morally wrong. And in the end, this position became untenable'...
‘Was there any sense from the establishment, that if they did level, this, this oil embargo, that there was a risk that Japan might launch some kind of military action?’
‘Yes, but not against the United States itself, what American policymakers thought might happen, was that it might encourage Japan to push into other areas that might give it other sources of oil, in particular, what they were worried about, especially after the occupation of the Netherlands, by Germany in the European Theater, the Netherlands had a colony, which was what we now call Indonesia, which was a potential source of oil. So there was a concern that Japan might push south and expand its empire into Southeast Asia as a way of pivoting away from its reliance on American exports, and to feed that need for oil.’...
'When Americans thought about what kind of a threat Japan might be, they really minimalize that threat. So making the case that actually, even isolationists, saying we can be assertive against Japan, take a hard line, have an embargo, force a tough negotiating position, because on the one hand, Japan wouldn't dare attack the United States. This is a really common idea. And on the other hand, even if they did, it wouldn't matter, because the US is so much stronger than Japan. And you hear this really quite biased and racialized skepticism of Japan's military prowess. And so for example, in some of the planning documents, you read about discussions of the Japanese having a sort of Asian eye shape that causes nearsightedness and therefore makes for bad pilots. And so Americans oughtn’t be worried about an attack from Japan because they simply can't fight well. And these really ridiculous racialized ideas, even though they've been disproven by Japan's military successes in the 19th and 20th century, they're still very pervasive...
If the isolationists in the US, who had made the case that Well, none of America's interests in the Asia Pacific are vital, had held sway, then it would have been possible to have a negotiation and a resolution between the US and Japan. So, if the US were willing to back down from their support of nationalist China, and allow that war to go on without supporting the Chinese, then they would have been able to meet, to reach a diplomatic settlement. Certainly one can imagine a situation in which leaving the China question to one side, the Japanese and American leaderships could have looked at a map of the Asia Pacific and drawn lines. We think about Hawaii as being an American state and a part of the United States. But in 1941, it wasn't. It was just a territory. And it's halfway between the US and Japan... But American sentiment was so strong in support of China. And American sentiment was also quite strong in the sort of moral argument that aggression against neighbor states is wrong. It's hard to imagine the US agreeing to that, unless they had been more aware of the potential of a Japanese attack, and the US did have some intelligence information. This really was a bolt out of the blue from the American perspective, people simply didn't imagine a Japanese attack particularly not a coordinated Japanese attack, not only on a major American naval base at Pearl Harbor, but also simultaneously at Manila in the Philippines, at Singapore. People didn't see it coming, and wouldn't have imagined that it was possible.'"

Pearl Harbor episode 3: Countdown to the raid | HistoryExtra - "‘Should the US have known better?’
‘I think one of the things that people misunderstand about Pearl Harbor because we so often referred to it as a surprise attack. I think people are surprised to know that the entire country expected that it would be at war with Japan in a matter of days. The atmosphere at that time was really tense. And there were all kinds of warnings that, well, we're going to be at war. In fact, on November 27, Washington sent a memo a message to all military commands in the Pacific, which would include not only Hawaii, but Panama, the canal was under American control. And the Philippines, also under American control. All those commands got a message on November 27. The first nine words of which are some of the most memorable in American history. This is to be considered a war warning. So everyone knew there was a chance that war was going to break out. The surprise was where it did it, meaning Hawaii...
[Husband Kimmel] figured that to attack Hawaii would be insane. Just logistically, it would be impossible...
‘Arguably, the prospect of the Japanese launching a surprise attack shouldn't have been such a surprise after all.’
‘In 1904 and 1905, Japan and Russia went to war. The war began really with a surprise Japanese attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet. And the Russians were badly damaged, the Japanese won the war. So everyone knew that this was in their DNA, that they liked the idea of surprise. Kimmel knew it, he had been warned repeatedly about it and had even written notes about it to his own people… I'll give you a good example of of his mindset. Pearl Harbor is as harbors go shallow, at its deepest point. It's only about 45 feet, and that's enough for the draft of big ships, they they draw a lot of water, but it's really not that deep as harbors go. Why is that significant? Well, everyone knew that probably the most lethal threat to a ship at that time was the air dropped torpedo. I guess submarine torpedoes too, but a submarine torpedo hits below the waterline and that immediately causes problems. I mean, a bomb hitting you on the deck doesn't sink you necessarily but something that breaks through your hull, you're in trouble. And 45 feet is not or was not at the time deep enough for a plane to drop a torpedo and have the torpedo not bury itself in the mud of the harbor. Because a torpedo weighs like 2000 pounds and before it can actually begin its run underwater toward a ship it will dive quite deeply. Washington warned Kimmel that new tests indicate that while 45 feet in the past was kind of a guarantee you could not be torpedoed because the waters too shallow, it was no longer safe to assume that. Torpedoes were being redesigned so they didn't drop into the water as deeply. And the message went to Kimmel saying specifically you cannot assume that you're protected any more. Kimmel read the message, so did all these people and then they kind of said okay, and they forgot it. On December 7, it was torpedoes that did the, by far the most damage to the American fleet. So Kimball had a tendency to get bad information and reshape it to fit what he wanted to do, which was to sail out of the harbor in a grand march toward victory. But he wasn't terribly focused on protecting himself'...
'The United States had broken the Japanese diplomatic code… we had not broken their military codes… there was a strange exchange of messages in, I want to say September, August of 1941, in which Tokyo asked its consulate in Honolulu to report on which ships are leaving, which ships have arrived, and where they are anchored in the harbor. Oh, and also that you should divide the harbor into a grid, so that you can tell us that a battleship is in grid C2 or H5. This became known as the bomb plot message. It wasn't decoded until weeks later, it doesn't expressly say that the harbor is going to be attacked. And it certainly didn't give a date. And also, Japan was a meticulous gatherer of information. And they were asking similar information from their consulates in Seattle, in San Diego... Kimmel after the war, or after the attack argued that he was never told about this bomb plot message. It wasn't passed on to him. And he argued, there was the proof and you kept the proof from me. I think it's a stretch to say that a message that was sent in September would have kept them on alert in December more than, you know, three months later, and given Kimmel’s penchant for always reading information in the way that was least threatening. I'm not sure that he would have done anything about it. He would have said to him, Well, yeah, and they might want to know where our ships are, simply because if they know they're in the port, that means they're not sailing off Singapore, potentially hampering our plans. So I think a lot of emphasis has been placed on the ability to read the diplomatic traffic. They were reading it and it didn't tell them anything about what was about to happen in Hawaii... The reasons I think that there was no conspiracy are overwhelming. And I'll just share a couple with you. This can, this could be the subject of an entire episode, but I would throw out two things. Franklin Roosevelt's number one goal in December 1941, was to keep Britain afloat and fighting. He and Churchill had had a mind meld and the United States knew that it had to help Britain win, even if the United States wasn't in the war technically, at that point. Allowing the Japanese to attack in the Pacific certainly didn't solve or help Roosevelt's aim of keeping Britain afloat. Why? Because if the United States went to war in the Pacific, it would immediately start withdrawing forces from the Atlantic in order to defend itself in the Pacific. That's number one. Number two, Britain was still relying on shipping from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Empire was still sustaining Britain to some degree. Going to war in the Pacific, the Japanese would immediately begin attacking those places, and and hampering Britain's own supplies situation. Roosevelt would gain nothing and harm himself and the British and his country by just allowing an attack to happen. Let me offer the second reason why I don't think a conspiracy makes any sense. How would Roosevelt have known that the attack was coming? He didn't, didn't have an independent source of information, a hotline to some guy in Tokyo that, Franklin could pick up the phone and say, really they're about to attack, he was on the end of a long chain of people who provided intelligence. Top naval aides, top army aides, all the way down to cryptographers who would be listening to the Japanese, and try-, and putting messages down on paper. So the disinformation would reach Roosevelt after it had been in the hands or the ears of dozens, if not hundreds of people in Washington. In the 80 years since the attack, none of those people ever came forward and said, Oh, my goodness, I saw a message that said December 7, Pearl Harbor, and no one did anything about it. And that's one of the greatest conspiracies ever. And yet, that never happened. There were nine investigations of Pearl Harbor in the United States, including a massive, long Congressional investigation that took months. No evidence was ever produced, no witness ever came forward and said, I remember I gave that message to the Pentagon and and I know it got to the White House. I don't understand why they did nothing about it. So all these people went to their graves possessing the greatest secret in American history and not telling it...
Members of Congress had been told not to go home for Christmas holidays, because we were probably going to be at war and they would have to officially declare it. That's how much people thought a war was about to happen, and the only surprise was where it happened'"

Pearl Harbor episode 5: Chaos unleashed | History Extra - "‘Roosevelt chose his words well. By design or by accident, but they really did reflect the anger that Americans felt that someone could do this behind their back. The idea that the Japanese might force itself on America by the use of military action, and the deaths of several thousand young Americans was just lighting the touch paper, and it's very interesting in history to see that it's quite rare for these instances to happen. It never really happened in Britain during the war. There's terrible anger that, you know, the Germans were bombing us for the first time, there was much more of the stoical acceptance in Britain that this was almost inevitable, that it was going to happen. There was a sequence of events that made it more rational to Britons when they were considering the aggression of Nazi Germany. Not so America with Pearl Harbor. This really was a shot in the arm, an injection of anger and emotion that sustained the American public in all the sacrifices and trials that they were then going to subsequently be asked to sustain throughout the war. And it's important that we see this actually. Really, really interesting enough, war weariness never occurred in the American public. You never saw this expressed throughout the long years of the war. And it's a very interesting characteristic of societies when they've been at war for a long period of time. You even saw this in the First World War. And America hadn't been involved for very long, but in the Second World War, there was something really visceral about Pearl Harbor. And it was also visceral about the nature of the Japanese enemy who had committed this perfidy that resonated incredibly powerfully. I don't think there are any other examples. I might be persuaded that I'm wrong. But I can't think off the top my head of any other examples in the history of the United States, particularly where there's anger really hit everybody left and right, popular opinion, and all of a sudden to have Japan attacking American possessions preemptively. So dastardly, cannot be exaggerated. And I think in a sense, we often lose the sense of outrage as we, as we look back in time, but veterans, certainly all the newspapers, all the articles, I mean, it was one, that you can read now about from the time, are very, very explicit about the the anger that was felt. I mean it really unified American political opinion as well. And it also at a stroke, it removed the objections of the very, very large isolationist movement to the involvement of American troops in foreign adventures. I mean, that argument was dead, absolutely dead on the eighth of December, or the ninth of December 1941.’...
‘A lot of people often say, well, Pearl Harbor was the worst decision that the Japanese ever made. What would you say to that?’
‘I think it was, I think it was a disastrous decision. It was an unnecessary decision. The Japanese had a number of options that were open to them. If they had decided that they wanted to pursue the idea of creating by force, the co-prosperity sphere, which is what they had articulated publically for a number of years, they could have done it without actually involving the Americans. And it's very interesting, actually, I'm of the view that the Japanese could easily have invaded Hong Kong, Malaysia and taken Singapore and also the Dutch East Indies possessions as well without touching America at all. And therefore there is an argument that says, certainly I make the argument that the Japanese could have achieved their aims in the second world war without involving America.’
‘Is that a widely held field? Or do historians sort of debate that?’
‘Historians don't tend to debate. It's not widely held. But I think it's a, it's a valid view for this reason. We need to remember that America was focused and had just been persuaded to focus on the war in Europe. If America had been parked by Japan, in the Pacific, it's its forces not being touched, America could have focused its effort on fighting the war in Europe, and Japan could have got on with gobbling up Malaya, in particular, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. There was a pretty strong argument that didn't win over in Tokyo, that actually Japan should leave America on its own and allow circumstances to then follow and be negotiated through with the Japanese saying, well, this isn't your war, stay out of it. And I think there's a very good chance of that actually working, because the Japanese at no time in their conversations in 1941, considered what might happen to American public opinion. And this is because America has a notoriously fractious culture, like all democracies, because we live in democracies where diverse voices are encouraged. That wasn't the case in Japan, and the Japanese high command never understood this. Whenever they saw an argument as a newspaper that said, you know, we should as Americans do X, Y and Z, they took it as read that that was policy, or that was the way all Americans thought. It wasn't the case at all. They'd never ever thought, there is no evidence, I've not found, having studied this for years, no evidence and no files of the Japanese actually considering what might happen in America as a consequence of this attack. They saw it all in operational terms. And that was a serious, serious mistake. So yes, it was a serious mistake, because without it, that touchpaper wouldn't have been lit. So just ask yourself the question, if Pearl Harbor didn't happened, would that anger towards Japan have been so resonant? Well, possibly, possibly not. Japan didn't understand that at the time, and they walked into a trap of their own making.’
‘So it sounds they're like they really miscalculated America's mindset. But do you think that they also miscalculated America's military strength or potential for military strength?’
‘Oh, absolutely. And it's very interesting that, the story I like to tell is that the size of the American army, at the start of the Second World War was was smaller than Portugal's. I mean, America did not have a large standing army. It didn't have significant military power. But as you say, use the word potential. It had enormous military potential as a consequence of its industrial capability. It also, its ability to organize very quickly. And I also often use the phrase that the war was won in Detroit. And in a very real sense, it was. It was able to be, to become the arsenal of democracy to use Churchill's phrase. And Japan never really understood that well. If they did understand it, and of course, many people did. I don't want to denigrate Japanese understanding of America at the time, they didn't appreciate its consequences, or certainly they thought that their tactical victory would be sufficient to persuade the Americans not to involve themselves in a long drawn out bloody war in the Far East. Remember, America was and had been since the 1850s, a pacific nation. It had undertaken a number of military expeditions in South America and the Philippines. But it wasn't seen to be militarily aggressive. It was seen to be pacific as a culture, it was more intent on making money and extending its global influence by trade and so on, rather than by by military might. And there was a sense in Japan, certainly in the the corridors of power in the high command that America didn't have the guts, or the willpower, or the commitment to take the next step, which was to engage in full scale, bloody, sacrificial war’...
‘It's remained a really important part of the American psyche since. It hasn't changed their attitude to Japan, they're very friendly with Japan, and they have every right to be, but in terms of our, their historic memory, it's one of the most pivotal things. You know, go to an American school now and ask them about Pearl Harbor. Everyone will tell you about it. There's a very different story in Japan. When I go to Japan, and I, say in recent years have interviewed veterans. They're the only people who are still interested in the war. Japan moved on very quickly from the war. There was a very, very visceral, had a very visceral impact on Japanese culture and society. And most people just turn their back on it. There's very little real analysis of the war, very few historians. I mean, someone was talking to me very recently about how Britain seems to be obsessed with the Second World War. I don't think that's entirely right. But we are very interested. And it was an incredibly important part of our national story. And there are lots of historians doing really serious work in the Second World War. And that's fascinating. You don't find that in Japan. It's actually really difficult to find anything published in Japan, about the war, apart from the memoirs of soldiers who fought there, which are written for the regimental associations and so on. It's not part of Japanese culture or public memory, as indeed it is in the United States and the United Kingdom...
the whole of the Second World War should really be a story about the utility of force. Why Japan felt it was necessary to create an empire by beating other empires rather than coalescing with them. We found ourselves in 1941, with states that believed in force as as an instrument of its of power for its own good. And those conversations always overstated what power what military power could achieve.’"
Japan keeps being slammed for not self-flagellating over World War II. But really they don't care about World War II

The Mary Rose: the Tudor heyday of Henry VIII’s warship  | HistoryExtra - "‘It was a deeply personal rivalry and it remained so but of course because they were so similar. When they were getting on they were getting on spectacularly well but it only ever seemed to be quite temporary’
‘And when it came to 16th century alliances appearance was everything’
‘One of the greatest examples of Henry and Francis actually declaring they were friends now came in the summer of 1520 with a spectacular two-week meeting between these two kings known as the field of cloth of gold. Well it was held on neutral Territory between english-held Calais and French lands and it was a showpiece the like of which had never been seen before so Henry went with his Queen Catherine of Aragon and a huge entourage that included 3,000 soldiers and 500 Horsemen and hundreds of ships and it was like an invasion but a peaceful Invasion. And everything was so carefully stage managed by Henry's chief advisor Cardinal Woolsey to make sure that the the kings were strictly on an equal footing even down to would you believe remodeling the two hillsides from which each King rode down to meet the other. So they had to be of the same height otherwise one of the Kings would have the advantage. When the two kings did finally meet, the scene was described by Edward Hall who was one of the best chroniclers of the age and he said how they embraced with benign and courteous manner and sweet and goodly words of greeting and they went off arm in arm. But, this being Henry and Francis it wasn't going to stay very friendly for long. Because it was clear that this so-called sort of meeting of peace was really just a cover for each King to get one over on the other. So, they tried to outdo each other in the tournaments and the entertainments. Each king tried to be the most gallant with the ladies as it was described. And it all really fell apart a bit when Henry VIII got a little bit too full of himself and he also was a bit too full of wine and he challenged Francis to a wrestling match. Well this wasn't supposed to happen. It was just supposed to be their respective entourages who would fight each other. But Henry was sure of victory, he was a great sportsman and he very quickly got thrown to the ground by Francis. And to say things turned sour after that would be an understatement. Basically the meeting came to an end pretty soon after that and Henry promptly went and made peace with francis's greatest rival Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. So really this incredible showpiece, this cripplingly expensive masquerade of friendship was soon shown to be the real sham that it actually was’...
'He definitely needed a male heir. Now we tend to forget that the Tudors were still quite a new and fairly fragile dynasty and Henry really felt that. So it wasn't just vanity, his need for male air. He actually did genuinely, desperately need one'"

History of the sea: Mary Rose - "While only fragments of this anti-boarding netting were recovered, originally it would have been placed over the heads of the crew on the waist and castle decks of the Mary Rose, forming a roof of pitch-covered hemp. This was in place to prevent the ship being captured, enemy boarders would have to cut through the net to get on board, during which time they were at the mercy of the crew underneath, who would be stabbing and shooting at them.  While it proved very efficient at keeping people out, sadly it was equally good at keeping people in. While a lot of people claim it was the crew’s inability to swim that caused them to drown, even the most proficient swimmer would be unable to get through this netting in time. Because of this, of five hundred men on board only the 30 or so working above the netting survived."

The Mary Rose: inside the Tudor treasure trove | HistoryExtra - "It was just after the Reformation. Using these rosaries to say your prayers was actually banned in the 1530s. You couldn't say your prayers by rote using a rosary. And just after Henry VIII died, they were completely banned. If you were caught using one, you'd be punished, because they were this sorta Catholic way of praying. And yet we had 8 or 9 of them on board... generally these beads are generally around the ship, as if they may have been with people when they died, they may have been hidden in their trouser pockets as it were. They weren't generally in the chests we found... if someone had been praying with a rosary for 20 or 30 years, they weren't gonna just stop praying that way because the King had become head of the Church of England and was changing his faith because of his marriage problems. Or maybe it was just a keepsafe or a memento or kept them safe'...
'Maybe these rosaries belonged to foreign crew members... many of the objects are the sort which would be lost to time. And that's what makes them so special'"

Links - 8th June 2023 (2 - China's 'peaceful' rise)

Chinese cities are struggling to pay their bills as 'hidden debts' soar - "Three years of strict pandemic controls in China and a real estate crash have drained local government coffers, leaving authorities across the country struggling with mountains of debt. The problem has gotten so extreme that some cities are now unable to provide basic services, and the risk of default is rising. Analysts estimate China’s outstanding government debts surpassed 123 trillion yuan ($18 trillion) last year, of which nearly $10 trillion is so-called “hidden debt” owed by risky local government financing platforms that are backed by cities or provinces.  As the financial pressure has mounted, regional governments have reportedly been slashing wages, cutting transportation services and reducing fuel subsidies in the middle of a harsh winter.  Thousands of people in the northern province of Hebei had trouble heating their homes in November and December because of a shortage of natural gas, according to multiple Chinese media reports. Cuts in government subsidies were partly to blame, according to state-owned news site Jiemian.  In January, in the northernmost province of Heilongjiang, households in the city of Hegang were also left without heat after local firms severely restricted supply. The companies blamed the move on a lack of government subsidies. The lack of heating in the dead of winter has led to widespread complaints on social media... Local governments have exhausted their budgets after spending enormous amounts of money on enforcing frequent Covid lockdowns, mass testing and setting up quarantine centers...   “Beijing is facing an economic minefield of its own making,” said Craig Singleton, senior fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “All told, China’s current debt crisis represents a perfect storm.” It’s not yet clear how much the country has spent in total on fighting the pandemic. But one province, Guangdong, revealed that it had spent $22 billion on eliminating Covid over the three years beginning 2020.  Revenue, meanwhile, contracted sharply over the same period. Rolling lockdowns seriously dented household incomes, leading many to reduce spending, which in turn resulted in less tax revenue for local governments. Huge tax breaks to support businesses through the pandemic also reduced government income.  Further complicating matters is the housing market slump; home prices have been falling for 16 straight months. Land sales, which typically account for more than 40% of local government revenue, have collapsed. Last year, a number of cities suspended bus services due to budget constraints, including Leiyang in Hunan province and Yangjiang in Guangdong, according to operators’ announcements. Separately, Hegang, the city in Heilongjiang province, made history in early 2022 by becoming the first to be forced to undergo a fiscal restructuring due to grave debt distress, according to state media reports... Public sector jobs, considered the most secure in the country, were also affected elsewhere. In June, several wealthy eastern provinces — including Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu -— slashed pay by as much as 30%, according to Chinese news website Caixin...   There are already signs local governments are having trouble repaying their liabilities.  In early January, a troubled government-owned company in the southwestern province of Guizhou responsible for building infrastructure projects announced that its lenders had given it an extra 20 years to repay loans worth $2.3 billion. Loan rollovers with a such a long time frame are extremely rare in China... The central government in Beijing has signaled it’s not coming to the rescue... China’s economy is in a severe downturn. GDP grew only 3% last year, the second worst growth in 46 years.  The government had previously resorted to the old playbook of encouraging local governments to borrow more money to fund infrastructure projects to boost growth. In December, an infrastructure push helped boost economic activity, leading to signs of growth stabilization."

Facebook - "It’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Chinese Ambassador to the UN tweeted this, unironically. “History can’t be denied, distorted or forgotten.” In his country, it can. And not just history but the present as well."

Opinion | China’s collapsing birth and marriage rates reflect a people’s deep pessimism - The Washington Post - "China’s nosedive in childbearing is a silent alarm. It signals deep disaffection with the bleak future the regime is engineering for its subjects. In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in President Xi Jinping’s rule... births in China have fallen steeply and steadily since 2016, year after year. In 2022, China had only about half as many births as just six years earlier (9.6 million vs. 17.9 million). That sea change in childbearing predated the coronavirus pandemic, and it appears to be part of broader shock, for marriage in China is also in free fall. Since 2013 — the year Xi completed his ascent to power — the rate of first marriages in China has fallen by well over half. Headlong flights from both childbearing and marriage are taking place in China today. Of course, fertility levels, and marriage rates, are dropping all around the world. But these declines tend to be gradual, occurring across decades. China has been hit by seismic demographic jolts. Birth shocks of this order almost never occur under stable modern governments during peacetime. Swift and sharp fertility crashes instead usually reflect catastrophe: famine, war or other shattering upheavals...
During China’s Mao-era famine, in which tens of millions perished, birth levels fell by less than 40 percent between 1957 (the last year before the Great Leap Forward) and 1961 (the depths of the starvation).
During the chaos of the Soviet collapse, Russian Federation birth levels fell by less than 40 percent between 1988 (the year before the Berlin Wall fell) and 1994 (when male life expectancy fell to a gruesome 57 years).
In Yugoslavia’s hellish breakup and ethnic cleansing, birth levels in Bosnia fell by about 40 percent between 1990 (the last year before Yugoslavia’s breakup) and 1995. Even Pol Pot, architect of auto-genocide in Cambodia, could not quite manage to force that nation’s birth total down by half during the Khmer Rouge nightmare: According the UNPD, birth levels in Cambodia dropped by 48 percent between 1973 and 1977...
Much of East Asia is beset by super-low fertility — not just China but also Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. But in China, it is occurring under a totalitarian regime exhorting its subjects to provide more issue for the empire.  The timing of China’s birth collapse matters: The downward spiral commenced immediately after the Chinese Communist Party suspended decades of coercive birth-control policy... A dictatorship may use bayonets to depress birthrates — but it is much trickier to deploy police state tactics to force birthrates up... we see millions of young people joining spontaneous movements expressing alienation from work — tang ping (lying flat) — and from Chinese society itself — bai lan (let it rot). The Xi regime doesn’t know what to do about this new form of internalized civil disobedience.  Last year, during one of the regime’s innumerable, drastic pandemic lockdowns, a video went viral in China before authorities could memory hole it.  In the video, faceless hazmat-clad health police try to bully a young man out of his apartment and off to a quarantine camp, even though he has tested negative for the coronavirus. He refuses to leave.  “Don’t you understand,” they warn, “if you don’t comply, bad things can happen to your family for three generations.”  “Sorry” he replies mildly. “We are the last generation. Thank you.”  That moment prompted the spread in China of a despairing social media hashtag: #Lastgeneration."

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Zuma’s Moment of Reckoning - "‘At the end of their one month investigation, the WHO team did finally hold a press conference. It lasted for two and a half hours and during that time, they managed to answer five questions. People have never been to a Chinese government organized press conference. This may sound impossible, but the Communist Party are masters at delivering the appearance of accountability via sessions like this. You start with very long opening statements going through the history of why the project was established, and then consecutively translate the whole thing, meaning every long and dreary response must be delivered in both Chinese and English. Then, you only call on a few journalists to speak, answer them in the longest possible ponderous fashion and don't allow any follow up questions.’"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Lebanon’s Lockdown - "‘Since the reform era, China has invested hugely in English learning, making it part of a compulsory education. The Chinese people have also gone to great lengths to master the language. As a result, the country's English proficiency has made a great leap forward, settling eighth among the 20 Asian countries ranked by one survey. In recent years, some have started to question the relevance of English. Two years ago, a heated debate erupted after Hua Qianfang, a farmer turned blogger and writer published a post on the social media Weibo, claiming that English is useless to most Chinese people. He also described those keen English learners as self diminishing slaves of Western ideology. 20,000 netizens shouted their support, while others accused him of being narrow minded and nationalistic. China's rapidly growing economy and the rising position in the world have led to increased nationalism, which in turn have been openly stoked by the authorities. Last spring to legislators even proposed to cancel English translation services and to reduce the number of English lessons at a school in order to promote Chinese... Charles the Great, the Holy Roman Emperor, famously said, to have another language is to have a second soul'"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Hong Kong’s Exodus - "‘The city is seeing a new wave of migration. In a tiny flat on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, I met a middle class family preparing to leave. They had maps of British cities taped on the walls of their apartment. Afraid of becoming targets of a new national security law, even these middle aged finance specialists hid their identity while speaking to me. When Beijing imposed the national security law in Hong Kong in July 2020, the authorities said it would return stability to the city. Carrie Lam, the city's chief executive said the law would only be used to target the leaders and organizers of the protest movement, which at times paralyzed this financial hub in 2019. But the impact of the law has spread fear and uncertainty across the city. It feels like we are fleeing, not immigrating, the family told me. An estimated 2% of the city has left Hong Kong since the introduction of the new law. People have left the city because of politics before. Many left when Hong Kong was returned to China. Some of those leaving are political activists fleeing arrest, but some are also less politically active. Many families have told me they want to leave. They're worried what the future of Hong Kong holds for their children's generation… Anything is possible now in Hong Kong, one friend told me it feels more dangerous in Hong Kong than Beijing. He said he plans to apply for the British Overseas visa, and one day to relocate to the UK. Some activists compare the number of people leaving the city to the plight of Ugandan Asians, who are forced to leave their country under the dictator Idi Amin in the 1970s... The hope was that Hong Kong would be able to change China. Now it's the other way around’"
From 2021

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, A Taliban show of force in Afghanistan - "'Tensions escalated after the initial amassing of 200 Chinese vessels when a Philippine civilian boat carrying a local TV crew was chased away by two Chinese navy missile boats. It was the first recorded instance of a Chinese naval boat stalking a Philippine vessel inside the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic waters... curiously strongman Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, infamous for bad mouthing his enemies, hasn't said a word. It's quite a change from his stance in the 2016 election campaign when he said he would ride a jetski to plant the Philippine flag at the Spratly Islands to stake the country's claim to the archipelago. Political analysts will have to wonder whether the governments in Manila and Beijing are growing closer… he feels hurt that the government appears to be favoring China over Filipinos. I feel sad says Mario. The time is getting near where I can say the Philippines has become a province of China.'"

TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges - "An explosive new lawsuit claims TikTok owner ByteDance built a "backdoor channel" in its code that allowed Chinese Communist Party members access to user data hosted in the US.  The wrongful termination suit, which was filed on Friday in San Francisco Superior Court by Yintao Yu, alleges ByteDance granted special powers to members of a unit of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, inside the company, referred to as the "Committee." Yu is a former engineering lead for ByteDance in the US who worked at the company between 2017 and 2018... The suit says the CCP "Committee," which did not work for ByteDance, could monitor its business activities, demote content the unit viewed as unfavorable to China's interests, and even use a "death switch" to turn off Chinese versions of its apps.  The complaint alleges the "Committee continued to have access" to US user data even after ByteDance walled off access for individual engineers in China.  Specifically, the suit says Yu "saw the backdoor channel in the code, which allows certain high level persons to access user data, no matter where the data is located, even if hosted by a U.S. company with servers located in the U.S. Chinese law requires the company to grant access to user data to the Chinese government." The complaint alleges ByteDance "was aware that if the Chinese government's backdoor was removed from the international/U.S. version of the app, the Chinese government would, it feared, ban the company's valuable Chinese-version apps."  TikTok has previously said it doesn't share information with the Chinese government, that US user data is stored in the US and Singapore, and that its content moderation is led by a US-based team that "operates independently from China."... The suit alleges that Yu was fired from the company for his "observation and reporting of illegal conduct."... The complaint also claims the internal CCP group was tasked with helping ByteDance stick to "core Communist values," at times blocking content around events like the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong."

TikTok’s parent company accessed the data of US journalists - "An internal investigation at TikTok parent company ByteDance found that several employees accessed the TikTok data of at least two US journalists and a “small number” of other people connected to them, according to internal emails obtained by The Verge that were first reported by The New York Times. The accessed data includes the reporters’ IP addresses, which were used to see if they had been physically near TikTok employees who were suspected of leaking information to the press... The revelation comes as US lawmakers make moves to restrict TikTok over national security concerns, including banning it from government phones. It also shows ByteDance walking back denials that TikTok has never been used to “target” journalists... Song Ye, ByteDance’s head of audit and risk control who reported to its CEO, has left the company in connection with the investigation and that three other employees have been fired. One of those employees is Chris Lepitak, TikTok’s head of internal audit who reported to Ye... Forbes reported that ByteDance had planned on using TikTok to track the location data of specific US citizens. At the time, the reporter behind the story pointed out that the company admitted to collecting approximate locations using IP addresses. TikTok strongly denied the story, saying that it lacked “rigor and journalistic integrity” and that any employees using the audit system in the way Forbes described would be fired."

TikTok shares your data more than any other social media app: Study - "YouTube and TikTok track users’ personal data more than any other social media apps.  The study found that YouTube, which is owned by Google, mostly collects your personal data for its own purposes — like tracking your online search history, or even your location, to serve you relevant ads. But TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, mostly allows third-party trackers to collect your data — and from there, it’s hard to say what happens with it.  With third-party trackers, it’s essentially impossible to know who’s tracking your data or what information they’re collecting, from which posts you interact with — and how long you spend on each one — to your physical location and any other personal information you share with the app.  As the study noted, third-party trackers can track your activity on other sites even after you leave the app."

TikTok chief admits Chinese parent company has access to data - "TikTok’s chief executive has admitted that users' data can be accessed by its Chinese parent company as it battles a potential ban in the United States... Mr Chew, who is based in Singapore, told members of Congress that he had not spoken to a Chinese government official since taking charge two years ago, and that he had “no evidence” that TikTok users’ data had been accessed by the Chinese government.  When asked if ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has been able to spy on staff, he said: ”I don't think that spying is the right way to describe it.”  Mr Chew said ByteDance employees in China will not have access to US users’ data by the end of the year, when it will complete a $1.5bn (£1.2bn) plan to move data to IT giant Oracle. The company has not made equivalent promises about UK and European users’ data... China threatened to block a forced sale of the app, saying it would “firmly oppose” the Biden administration’s plan to take the viral video app out of Chinese hands... Mr Chew repeatedly refused to answer questions on whether he agrees that the Chinese government represses China’s Uyghur minority.  In response to TikTok being banned from government devices, he said he did not believe any social media apps should be on official phones."

TikTok Creators’ Sensitive Financial Information Stored In China

TikTok Tracked Users Who Watched Gay Content, Prompting Employee Complaints - WSJ - "For at least a year, some employees at TikTok were able to find what they described internally as a list of users who watch gay content on the popular app, a collection of information that sparked worker complaints, according to former TikTok employees. TikTok doesn’t ask users to disclose their sexual orientation, but it cataloged videos users watched under topics such as LGBT, short for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, the former employees said. The collection of information, which could be viewed by some employees through a dashboard, included a set of affiliated users who watched those videos, and their ID numbers... Former TikTok employees who have worked elsewhere in the tech industry say the dashboard that provided access to view the data was accessible to more workers than is common at other tech platforms. Employees in China also had access to the data, and at times controlled the permissions for who could view the information, according to the former employees."
I saw some people pretending that this was exactly the same as algorithms pushing relevant content to people. Do they even read stories before commenting on them?

WELCH: TikTok's War on the West, And Why We're Still Losing It. - "while Western governments fumbled around to weaponize the internet against the public, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has already perfected the art, with its TikTok app serving a means to atomise generations of Westerners...   The creators and engineers working on TikTok’s algorithm are instructed to promote all things degenerate and immoral on the app. The Chinese version of TikTok, called Douyin, also owned by Bytedance, promotes engineers, scientists, adventurers and members of the Chinese public working hard to achieve their dreams. Whereas the Western version promotes baseless political ideas, and soft pornography by way of half-naked girls and boys dancing suggestively. The Western version glorifies mental illnesses and emotional instability, all the while celebrating violence, crime, and instant self-gratification.  The ultimate goal of the Chinese government is that of total corruption and atomisation of Westerners, by dumbing down the content that they receive, attacking their ability to concentrate and assume self-control, as well as promoting pernicious and iniquitous ideas and beliefs amongst the youth of rival countries. Such an effort would have been inconceivable ten years ago. Yet now, parents are allowing their children to be corrupted by a hostile, megalomaniacal foreign government hellbent on capturing their attention and pacifying them through endless scrolling – if the parents aren’t themselves consumed by TikTok, that is. And for some unbeknownst reason, there’s little effort or resolve to remove the app or to recognise it as a true threat to western stability and health... There’s plenty of concern about Andrew Tate and his effects on young boys, however. But how do people think he became such a sensation last year? He figured out a way to utilise the algorithm on TikTok for his benefit. Yet no one raises these concerns about the app itself."
(PDF) Chinese TikTok (Douyin) Challenges and Body Image Concerns: A Pilot Study
How Luxury Fashion Brands Approach Douyin Marketing in China
Costume Changes on the Subway is China's Latest Crazy TikTok Challenge
Cute Asian Girl Shows Her Wet Pussy on Chinese TikTok Version Douyin hot sexy adult video
Why you shouldn’t use Douyin (“the Chinese TikTok”) to improve your Mandarin - "What makes Douyin so popular in China? One thing works really well: Douyin’s self-learning algorithm “personalizes” your feed. It does so based on your viewing behavior (interaction, viewing time etc.). It adapts almost immediately. The more you engage with the app, the more it’ll show that kind of content Douyin thinks you want to see. That’s why when my friend from Russia opens his app, he only sees half-naked women dancing around."
I keep seeing this conspiracy theory. But it is contradicted by what actually happens on Douyin

Chinese livestreamers flock outdoors for late-night tips - "In the dead of night on a bridge in southern China, around two dozen livestreamers sat crooning and chatting into microphones, their identical ring lights spaced a few metres apart in glowing rows. The broadcasters gather in spots like this in the city of Guilin most nights with the hopes of catching the attention of online “passers-by” scrolling through livestreams on Douyin... “There are too many indoor livestreamers,” said 27-year-old Qiao Ya, who works from 9:00 pm to 3:00 am every night.  “For indoor livestreaming you need to look pretty to be able to attract viewers, but I’m too average for that.”  Outdoor broadcasting took off about a year ago, and conditions can be harsh.  When AFP visited this week, the temperature had dropped to almost zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), with streamers bundled in thick blankets and some bringing small heaters.  “Viewers might feel if we’re outdoors or just by ourselves late at night that it’s very tough, so they might be nicer to us,” said Qiao, whose only income comes from donations through her stream. Livestreaming on apps like Douyin, which said it had 600 million users in 2020, is a popular way to make money in China... On a good day, Qiao makes up to 600 yuan (US$87) over eight hours of streaming. On a bad day, her takings can be as low as 10 yuan (US$1.50).  Like most Douyin performers, Qiao is signed with a livestreamer talent agency, which takes a 10 percent cut of her revenue in exchange for equipment rental and management of her social media presence.  Douyin takes another 50 percent, leaving streamers like Qiao with just 40 percent of what they make... Most of the streamers on the bridge on Monday were young women, with one of the few men wearing a furry frog suit... ouyin issued a warning against public disturbances caused by outdoor livestreaming, though that has largely gone unheeded after an initial crackdown.  Zhang said sometimes people walking past react angrily to her.  “Some look at us with some discrimination. They ask ‘Why don’t you find a normal job?'” she said...   Despite the risks, big donations keep livestreamers like Qiao coming back.  “One guy scrolled past my roadside livestream one night at 2:20 am and felt very touched,” Qiao said.  The anonymous man gave her a 3,000 yuan (US$435) donation."
Damn TikTok, destroying the West with its algorithmns!

'Winnie the Pooh' movie pulled from theatres in Hong Kong - "Public screenings of a slasher film that features Winnie the Pooh were scrapped abruptly in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking discussions over increasing censorship in the city.  Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment announced on Facebook that the release of "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" on Thursday had been canceled with "great regret" in Hong Kong and neighboring Macao.   In an email reply to The Associated Press, the distributor said it was notified by cinemas that they could not show the film as scheduled, but it had no idea about the reasons behind it. The cinema chains involved did not immediately reply to a request for comment. For many residents, the Winnie the Pooh character is a playful taunt of China's President Xi Jinping, and Chinese censors in the past had briefly banned social media searches for the bear in the country. In 2018, film "Christopher Robin" also featuring Winnie the Pooh was reportedly denied a release in China...   In 2021, the government tightened guidelines and authorised censors to ban films believed to have breached the sweeping law.  Ng said the city saw more cases of censorship over the last two years but mostly targeting non-commercial movies, such as independent short films."

‘Monster Hunter’ Pulled From Chinese Cinemas Over Scene Said to Be Racial Slur - "Chinese regulators are in the midst of censoring the Hollywood title “Monster Hunter” after controversy broke out online on opening day over a ten second-long exchange in the film that patriotic local viewers say “insults China.”... In the scene, a white male character and an Asian character played by Jin are driving together at high speed. “What?” says the former. “Look at my knees!” shouts Jin. “What kind of knees are these?” asks his companion. “Chi-nese!” jokes Jin, punning on the word’s last syllable.  Though some might view this as camaraderie and banter over a bad pun, Chinese viewers were incensed after the exchange was interpreted as a reference to an old, racist schoolyard rhyme insulting Asians. “Chi-nese, Jap-a-nese, dir-ty knees, look at these,” it apparently sing-songs, accompanied by knee slaps and slant-eyed gestures."
From 2020

Meme - China: "We're banning Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter... Haha!"
Normal person: "Okay."
Normal person: "We're banning TikTok."
China: "You cannot do that! That's racist, sinophobe, anti-Asian, US Imperialism! You're just jealous of us!"

Analysis: Xi, not Trump, started on path to decoupling - Nikkei Asia - ""It was Xi Jinping who made the first crucial statement that led to the separation of the U.S. and Chinese economies," said a retired party veteran, noting this happened just before he ascended to the Chinese Communist Party's top leader.  The fact that Xi has stayed true to his original instincts shows that he is a strong-willed politician who follows through on his original intentions. Whether that is a good thing or not for the Chinese economy, is another debate.  It all started around the party's 18th national congress, held in November 2012. For context, the national congress was delayed significantly due to the political turmoil over former top Chongqing official Bo Xilai. During the quinquennial event, Xi, the leader in waiting, raised concern that the Chinese economy was being "hijacked" by the U.S. As leader, he was determined to correct the situation. Xi's statements were behind closed doors and not publicized. But with 3,000 delegates attending the national congress, it had many people talking about it.  At the time, however, people in China did not realize that Xi's intentions would have massive consequences for China's economy and society later on.  It was in the era of President Hu Jintao -- and unlike now -- unfettered discussions were still possible, as long as they were held only within the party. Thus Xi's remark about the Chinese economy being "hijacked" became widely known, sources said.  At the heart of Xi's frustration was former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping... From Xi's perspective, U.S. companies were operating freely in the Chinese market and making huge profits. China's group of private companies, too, were doing business at home and abroad, outside the party's control.  The conclusion was drawn that unless these issues were all corrected, the country's one-party rule was at risk.  The attempt to terminate the hijacking led to a drastic reversal of Deng's policies. It was no longer going to be about cooperation and closer economic relations with the U.S.  While the path to decoupling was not clear back in 2012, in retrospect, Xi's inner circle was beginning to consider reducing China's economic dependence on the U.S... Xi's prescriptions for tackling U.S. dependence has always been zi li geng sheng, self-reliance. He has also tried "dual circulation" -- an economic policy that seeks to reduce the role of foreign trade in driving the Chinese economy.  But whatever Xi's visions for an ideal Chinese economy were, the reality was that the Chinese economy, being so dependent on the outside world, was not going to function properly if self-reliance was the guiding philosophy... To some extent, Xi has got what he wanted. The U.S. is probably not hijacking the Chinese economy today.  But it has also become difficult for Chinese companies -- both state-owned and private -- to expand operations around the world without restrictions. This has become a drag on Chinese economic growth.  In the 11 years under Xi, the fundamental principle that moves China has changed. The party's political logic takes precedence over any logic of economic freedom. The economy is but a tool to complement Communist-led politics.  One question to ask is: What if the policy is fundamentally wrong in terms of improving people's livelihoods? Xi has already acquired ultimate power, and those around him are all his close aides. There is no one who can fundamentally correct the basic policy that the top leader has pushed ahead for political reasons.  Even Premier Li Qiang, who is ranked second after Xi in the party hierarchy and is in charge of the economy, is no exception... a veteran male employee of Astellas Pharma, a major Japanese drugmaker, was detained by Chinese authorities immediately before he was due to return to Japan from Beijing. He has worked in China for more than 20 years.  The Astellas detention is beginning to seriously impact Japanese companies operating in China.  The owner of a small-to-medium-sized Japanese company operating in China, told Nikkei on condition of anonymity, that they are moving production from China's Zhejiang province to Vietnam. "We were already shifting away and away from China. Everything is more expensive and there are political risks. The Astellas detention will only accelerate this trend.""

China urges jobless graduates to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and try manual work | Financial Times - "China is shifting the blame for soaring youth unemployment on to jobless university graduates, accusing them of refusing to put aside their professional ambitions and take on manual labour.  In recent weeks, state broadcasters and news agencies have published more than a dozen profiles of recent university graduates who allegedly made a fortune in low-skilled jobs such as selling street food or growing fruit, rather than pursuing a career in their area of study.  The Communist Youth League last month criticised young graduates for holding on to their professional aspirations, accusing them of refusing to “tighten screws in factories” and exhorting the current generation to “take off their suits, roll up their sleeves and go to the farmland”.  But the government’s narrative has drawn scorn on social media, with unemployed graduates criticising authorities for failing to create enough jobs for the growing ranks of well-educated youth. A much-liked WeChat retort to the Communist Youth League was to ask if its author was “willing to give up your current position and salary to become a cleaner”.  The backlash underscores growing public anger over a lack of social mobility in China, where coronavirus controls and a sweeping crackdown on the private sector have weighed on the world’s second-largest economy, further entrenching inequality.  While China’s economic recovery has begun to gain momentum, with growth rebounding to 4.5 per cent in the first quarter after pandemic restrictions were scrapped early this year, youth unemployment has remained a persistent area of pain.  Young job hunters were hit particularly hard by lockdowns, and many are still struggling. Unemployment in March among those aged 16 to 24 reached 19.6 per cent — the second-highest level on record — and has now stood above 16 per cent for a full year. By contrast, the country’s broader jobless rate has hovered at about 5 per cent. The swelling ranks of jobless youth also represent a looming demographic challenge for Chinese policymakers. The country’s population is entering decline for the first time in six decades and is set to be overtaken by India’s, just as concerns mount about a structural slowdown in economic growth.  Today’s graduates will be responsible for supporting their ageing parents, a cohort that outnumbers China’s youth after decades of strict family planning policies, while facing limited professional prospects and opportunities to start accumulating wealth. “Investing in education no longer guarantees a high return,” said Ming Xia, a political-science professor at the City University of New York. “That has undermined the basic idea of how ordinary people could climb the social ladder.”  The situation shows little signs of easing, as a record 11.6mn college graduates are expected to enter the already tight labour market this year. A survey last November of 100 China-based employers by 51job, a job listings website, found that more than half of respondents planned to reduce hiring in 2023."

The evidence to support medicalised gender transitions in adolescents is worryingly weak

The evidence to support medicalised gender transitions in adolescents is worryingly weak

"As the caseload has grown, so has a method of treatment, pioneered in the Netherlands, now known as “gender-affirming care”. It involves acknowledging patients’ feelings about a mismatch between their body and their sense of self and, after a psychological assessment, offering some of them a combination of puberty-blocking drugs, opposite-sex hormones and sometimes surgery to try to ease their discomfort. Komodo’s data suggest around 5,000 teenagers were prescribed puberty-blockers or cross-sex hormones in America in 2021, double the number in 2017.

The treatment is controversial. In many countries, but in America most of all, it has become yet another front in the culture wars...

Almost all America’s medical authorities support gender-affirming care. But those in Britain, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden, while supporting talking therapy as a first step, have misgivings about the pharmacological and surgical elements of the treatment. A Finnish review, published in 2020, concluded that gender reassignment in children is “experimental” and that treatment should seldom proceed beyond talking therapy. Swedish authorities found that the risks of physical interventions “currently outweigh the possible benefits” and should only be offered in “exceptional cases”. In Britain a review led by Hilary Cass, a paediatrician, found that gender-affirming care had developed without “some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced”. In 2022 France’s National Academy of Medicine advised doctors to proceed with drugs and surgery only with “great medical caution” and “the greatest reserve”.  

There is no question that many children and parents are desperate to get help with gender dysphoria. Some consider the physical elements of gender-affirming care to have been life-saving treatments. But the fact that some patients are harmed is not in doubt either. Ms Mosley, Ms Hein and Ms Cole are all “detransitioners”: they have changed their minds and no longer wish to be seen as male. All three bitterly regret the irreversible effects of their treatment and are angry at doctors who, they say, rushed them into it. Ms Cole considers herself to have been “butchered by institutions we all thought we could trust”.

The transitioning of teenagers has its roots in a treatment protocol developed in the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s. It is built on three pillars: puberty-blockers (formally known as GnRH antagonists), cross-sex hormones and surgery...

Under the original Dutch protocol, surgery was permitted only after a patient turned 18, although as the cases of Ms Cole and Ms Hein show, in some places mastectomies occur at a younger age. Male patients can have artificial breasts implanted. More elaborate procedures, in which females have a simulated penis built from a tube of skin harvested from the forearm or the thigh, or males have an artificial vagina made in a “penile inversion”, are performed extremely rarely on minors.

In 2020 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), a British body which reviews the scientific underpinnings of medical treatments, looked at the case for puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones. The academic evidence it found was weak, discouraging and in some cases contradictory. The studies suggest puberty-blockers had little impact on patients. Cross-sex hormones may improve mental health, but the certainty of that finding was low, and NICE warned of the unknown risks of lasting side-effects.

 For both classes of drug, NICE assessed the quality of the papers it analysed as “very low”, its poorest rating. Some studies reported results but made no effort to analyse them for statistical significance. Cross-sex hormones are a lifelong treatment, yet follow-up was short, ranging from one to six years. Most studies followed only a single set of patients, who were given the drugs, instead of comparing them with another set who were not. Without such a “control group”, researchers cannot tell whether anything that happened to the patients in the studies was down to the drugs, to other treatments the patients might be receiving (such as counselling or antidepressants), or to some other, unrelated third factor.

The upshot is that it is hard to know whether any of the supposed effects reported in the studies, whether positive or negative, are actually real. Reviews in Finland and Sweden came to similar conclusions. As the Swedish one put it, “The scientific base is not sufficient to assess…puberty-inhibiting or gender-opposite hormone treatment” in children.

Two American professional bodies, the Endocrine Society (es) and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (wpath) have also reviewed the science underpinning adolescent transitions. But ES’s review did not set out to look at whether gender-affirming care helped resolve gender dysphoria or improve mental health by any measure. It focused instead on side-effects, for which it found only weak evidence. This omission, says Gordon Guyatt of McMaster University, makes the review “fundamentally flawed”. WPATH, for its part, did look at the psychological effects of blockers and hormones. It found scant, low-quality evidence. Despite these findings, both groups continue to recommend physical treatments for gender dysphoria, and insist that their reviews and the resulting guidelines are sound. 

One justification for puberty-blockers is that they “buy time” for children to decide whether to proceed with cross-sex hormones or not. But the data available so far from clinics suggest that almost all decide to go ahead. A Dutch paper published in October concluded that 98% of adolescents prescribed blockers decide to proceed to cross-sex hormones. Similarly high numbers have been reported elsewhere.

The reassuring interpretation is that blockers are being prescribed very precisely, given only to those whose dysphoria is deep-rooted and unlikely to ease. The troubling one is that puberty-blockers lock at least some children in to further treatment. “Time to Think”, a new book about gids by a British journalist, Hannah Barnes, cites British medical workers concerned by the latter possibility. They say patients received blockers after cursory and shallow examinations...

Perhaps the biggest question is how many of those given drugs and surgery eventually change their minds and “detransition”, having reconciled themselves with their biological sex. Those who do often face fresh anguish as they come to terms with permanent and visible alterations to their bodies.

Once again, good data are scarce. One problem is that those who abandon a transition are likely to stop talking to their doctors, and so disappear from the figures. The estimates that do exist vary by an order of magnitude or more. Some studies have reported detransition rates as low as 1%. But three papers published in 2021 and 2022, which looked at patients in Britain and in America’s armed forces, found that between 7% and 30% of them stopped treatment within a few years.

The original Dutch studies published in 2011 and 2014 were longitudinal—that is, they followed the same group of patients throughout their treatment. Yet three recent critiques published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy nonetheless find fault with the studies’ data. 

One of the new studies’ concerns is the small size of the original samples. The 2011 paper looked at 70 patients. But the outcome of treatment was only known for between 32 and 55 of them (the exact number depends on the specific measure). And even then, the final assessment of outcomes occurred around 18 months after surgery—a very short timeframe for a treatment whose effects will last a lifetime...

The critiques also suggest that the finding that gender dysphoria improved with treatment may have been an artefact of how the participants were assessed...

The original studies seem to have inadvertently cherry-picked patients for whom the treatment was most effective. The researchers started with 111 adolescents, but excluded those whose treatment with puberty-blockers did not progress well. Of the remaining 70, others were omitted from the final findings because they did not return questionnaires, or explicitly refused to do so, or dropped out of care or, in one case, died of complications from genital surgery. The data may therefore exclude precisely those patients who were harmed by or dissatisfied with their treatment...

Newer longitudinal studies have been published since, but they have drawbacks, too. One published in January in the New England Journal of Medicine by Diane Chen of Northwestern University and colleagues looked at teenagers after two years of cross-sex hormone treatment. Although participants did typically report improvements in their mental health, they were small—generally single-digit increases on a scale that runs from 0 to 100. The study lacked a control group. Two of the 315 patients committed suicide. 

What is more, whatever the merits of the Dutch team’s original research, the patients passing through modern clinics are strikingly different from those assessed in their papers. Twenty years ago the majority of patients were pre-pubescent boys; in recent years teenage girls have come to dominate (see chart 2). The findings of older research may not apply to today’s patients.

The Dutch team’s approach was deliberately conservative. Patients had to have suffered from gender dysphoria since before puberty. Many of today’s patients say they began to suffer from dysphoria as teenagers. The Dutch protocol excludes those with mental-health problems from receiving treatment. But 70% or more of the young people seeking treatment suffer from mental-health problems, according to three recent papers looking at patients in America, Australia and Finland.

Despite the protocol’s caution, says Will Malone of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, an international group of concerned clinicians, the reality is often the reverse, especially in America, with mental-health issues becoming a reason to proceed with transitions, rather than to stop them. “We are now told that if we don’t address young people’s mental-health problems caused by dysphoria with transition, they will kill themselves.” 

The original Dutch protocol emphasises the need for careful screening and assessments, as do official guidelines in most countries. But whatever the guidance, there are persistent allegations that it is not being followed in practice. “I had one 15-minute appointment before I was given testosterone,” says Ms Mosley. Many American patients contacted by The Economist reported similarly brief examinations.  

The possibility that many teenagers presenting as trans could instead be gay has long been discussed. The Dutch study of 2011 found that 97% of the participants were attracted either to their own sex or to both sexes. In 2019 a group of doctors who resigned from GIDS told the Times, a British newspaper, of their worries about homophobia in some patients and parents. They worried that, by turning children into simulacra of the opposite sex, the clinic was, in effect, providing a new type of “conversion therapy” for gay children...

European medical systems have not concluded that it is always wrong for an adolescent to transition. They are not trying to erase distressed patients. They have simply determined that more research and data are needed before physical treatments for gender dysphoria can become routine. Further research could, conceivably, lead to guidelines similar to those already in use by American medical bodies. But that is another way of saying that it is impossible to justify the current recommendations about gender-affirming care based on the existing data."

Of course, TRAs live in a separate reality, and they are vigorous at keeping it that way by blocking/banning everyone who knows the facts

Clearly the Europeans are all transphobic bigots who don't Trust the Science and need to be deplatformed. It is no coincidence that on covid there was a similar divide

Links - 8th June 2023 (1 - Women)

Meme - "I'll never understand guys who pay dominatrixes to degrade them. Just get married and fold the towels wrong, dude"

Meme - "Work hard until you don't need to introduce yourself.
Brie Larson @brielarson: Actor / Mushroom Forager / SCUBA Certified Diver / Scientific American Subscriber / Dog Mom / Captain Marvel / Generally Stoked
Mia K. @miakhalifa: You know who am. "

Meme - ashley @lonelymood: "every time I do something nice for my bf other guys ask "where can i get a girl like u?" right here baby, i cheat"

Meme - "The dating pool for men 2023
RN
CNA
LPN
Tiktoker
BBL
Vape
Cat mom
Air Fryer only
Miami trips
F150 supercab
Divorced
Single mom
Not over her ex
Long back
Bottle girls
Boat demons
Her friends make the decisions
Daddy issues
OF
388 credit score
Age 34
Does too much *snow/ice*
Guy friends only
Pronouns"

Meme - "The dating pool for women 2023
Skips leg day
Send nudes
"wyd?"
Boring
Ugly af
No car
Drug dealer
No clue where the clit is
Has a gf
Married
Tiny dick
Doesn't eat ass
No job
Fuckboy
Has Two kids
Felon
DJ
Crackhead
Personal trainer
On roids
Online coach
5'6
5'4
Creep
CrossFitters
"Not looking for anything serious""

California 'Teacher of the Year' accused of sexually abusing a minor is re-arrested - "A San Diego County teacher suspected of having an inappropriate relationship with a former student was re-arrested Thursday, two days after bailing out of jail, authorities said.  Jacqueline Ma, a 34-year-old sixth-grade teacher at Lincoln Acres Elementary School in National City posted bail Tuesday night and was released from Las Colinas Detention Facility."

Dear Men, Shut up and Let Me Enjoy Astrology
Why Do Men Hate Astrology? The Misogyny Behind the Hate
Astrology doesn't need to be scientifically proven to be empowering — or feminist
Do you hate astrology or are you just sexist?
So much for "following the science"

Meme - "Liv Tyler in 1995
Liv Tyler in 2022"

Meme - "When he starts kissing the neck before Netflix even loads"

Meme - Red Lotus Lili: "Why is having a train ran on you seen as a negative thing? It means I convinced several men to work together into worshipping me"
Imagine thinking it's worship

Meme - "42. Mom at anti-capitalist
I'm a single mom. This makes dating impossible. My newborn recently passed away. I need a free donor. My preference is Korean, Japanese, or Chinese because my baby who passed was half asian (i'm caucasian). I'll settle for one who looks just like my other cute kids. Light blonde hair and blue or green eyes. Attractive face is a must. You can get a free std screening at any local health department. THen I'm all yours for a few days a month until I conceive. I cannot travel."

Mate Selection for Modernity - "This current situation can be summarized along four parameters:
    Increasing female achievement.
    Growing variability in male status and competence.
    An evolutionary desire among females to marry up.
    The globalization of the sexual marketplace and resultant collapse of local status hierarchies...
According to one study, women were most satisfied when their partner was 21cm taller. This is corroborated by other studies which found that 49 percent of women preferred dating taller men and that the shortest man a woman would date was 5 feet 9 inches. Moreover, a study of undergraduates reported that only four percent of women would accept a relationship where the woman was taller. In general, tall men are more likely to obtain attractive partners, less likely to remain childless, and have a greater number of children relative to short men. However, height isn’t the only factor which determines access to the sexual marketplace. Financial prospects matter as well.  A 1939 study found that American women rated good financial prospects twice as highly as males when gauging the value of a marriage partner. This finding was replicated in studies conducted in 1956 and 1967. Moreover, David Buss, attempting to replicate these studies, surveyed 1,491 Americans across four states in the mid-1980s. Once again, women valued good financial prospects in a mate roughly twice as much as men did. This gender difference has not changed. In fact, a 2014 Pew Research survey reported that 78 percent of unmarried women placed a high premium on finding a spouse with a steady job. Only 48 percent of men shared this view. In a study of the attributes valued in a marriage partner, psychologist Douglas Kenrick asked men and women to indicate the “minimum percentiles” of each attribute that they would find acceptable. When it came to earning capacity, women indicated that they preferred a man who earned more than 70 percent of all other men. In contrast, men desired a mate that earned more than 40 percent of all other women... What happens when a woman out-earns her husband? One study found that marriages where the wife out-earned the husband were 50 percent more likely to end in divorce... men who were not the primary breadwinner were more likely to use erectile dysfunction medication relative to men that were... education was one of the two strongest predictors of how many responses a man received from women. The other was income... What women truly desire then is the Chad who can ultimately fulfil his role as the dad.  Hypergamy is an evolutionary fixture. Hating it is tantamount to hating thermodynamic laws or Archimedean axioms. It simply is. Moreover, it is hypergamy that created the competence hierarchies that are used to structure human societies... Crucially, the more professionally successful a woman is, the stronger her preference for successful men... single women are three times as likely as men to say that they wouldn’t consider a relationship with someone making less than them... men exhibited less of a preference for women whose intelligence or ambition exceeded their own. A study by four UK universities found that a woman’s likelihood of marriage decreased by 40 percent for each 16-point increase in her IQ. In contrast, men experienced a 35 percent increase in the likelihood of marriage for each 16-point IQ increase. Finally, researchers reported that men displayed lower levels of implicit self-esteem when confronted with their female partner’s success. The opposite holds true for women when their male partner succeeded. Interestingly, some women have wised up to this dynamic. In a 2017 study of elite MBA students, three researchers found that single and non-single women provided similar answers to questions regarding salary and leadership aspirations when they thought their responses would remain anonymous. However, single women displayed less ambitious aspirations when they believed classmates would see their answers. The researchers concluded that highly educated women may avoid signalling professional ambition because it could be penalized in the marriage market... unmarried women face an overall shortage of partners with either a bachelor’s degree or yearly income exceeding $40,000... whereas men “liked” 60 percent of female profiles they viewed, women liked only 4.5 percent of male profiles. Moreover, women, on average, viewed 80 percent of men on dating apps as below average in attractiveness. Importantly, one study, seeking to quantify the prospects of success on Tinder, determined that “the bottom 80 percent of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22 percent of women and the top 78 percent of women are competing for the top 20 percent of men”... men are more than twice as likely to receive a reply from women less desirable than themselves than from more desirable ones... Tinder’s userbase is 72 percent male and 28 percent female... there’s a disconnect between what women want and what is actually available to them. Whereas greater male attainment increases the number of romantic options a man has, greater female attainment reduces the number of options a woman has.  This imbalance in the sexual marketplace is not a good thing. A society teeming with lonely women and sexually frustrated men is one hurtling toward disaster. It is imperative that we, as a society, think carefully about solutions to this burgeoning crisis."
Women go for rich men. Rich women go for even richer men

Meme - Replied to your story (of cleavage): "can i take u out"
"i have a bf sorry"
"he can go too. he just gotta pay for himself"

Meme - "Offset,Cheats on his thot wife"
WOMEN "she deserves so much better"
"Jada, Cheats on her loyal husband"
WOMEN "it was just an entanglement"

Meme - Auburn (fat girl): "i miss when men would go to war and die"
Nick Meme: "there was food rationing back then. You sure?"

Meme - "We ain't splitting any bills, sir"
"Oh, so what did you have in mind, ma'am"
"You got this, Mr. tech startup. I struggle to pay rent"
"So what are you offering me if I were to pay?"
"Yikes. I provide good company."
"So do I. I've worked hard to get to where I am in life. Shame on you for trying to take advantage. I'd suggest the value menu at BK."

Meme - *Man and woman in hot spring*
Woman: "Nice, huh?"
Man: "Yes, they are"
Woman: "They?"
Man: "Uhh, I mean IT IS, the hot spring is nice!"

Meme - "Ladies, your pierced titties look like bathtub plugs"

My son was ashamed to go to police over his 5ft girlfriend’s abuse. Then she killed him - "“You don’t understand what I’m dealing with,” Tai O’Donnell told his mother as they spoke on his doorstep. He seemed unusually scared, withdrawn. “Please tell me,” she said. “What is it?” The next day, 19-year-old Tai was found dead at his home in Croydon. He had been stabbed four times from behind by his girlfriend, Kamila Ahmad, 22 at the time, who stood a little over 5ft tall, with a high-pitched voice, eyelash extensions and painted nails. He bled to death in half an hour. Had an ambulance been called, he would probably have survived... Each time Tai tried to end it, Ahmad would threaten to take her own life. There were also threats of extreme violence... In court, Ahmad pleaded not guilty, claiming that she was the victim of abuse by Tai and Hussain"

Meme - "im glad he doesn't have hoes but why does he not have hoes??? am i fighting for a spot no one wants??!!"
"What do women want"

Meme - "Women don't understand men"
"Just bought him food, slept with him and then sent him home in an Uber. Let's see how men like it"
Keywords: how he likes him

Meme - "BRO IM SO SUCCESSFUL, ALL I NEED IS A SINGLE MOM IN MY LIFE"
"SAME, BRO, SAME"

Meme - "What's the dumbest thing you've ever heard?
I drive for Uber on the weekends and one time a girl who was in her late 20's told me that I was making her uncomfortable. I haven't said a word the whole trip so I asked how I could make the situation better. She said she didn't like how i kept "playing with the fidget stick in the middle of my car." I drive a manual. She then told me that I didn't need to use that because "her car didn't have that" and claimed to be a mechanic"

Meme - "AT HOME *2 cats at each others' throats*
ON FACEBOOK *cats doing Titanic pose*"

Meme - "More and more black men are getting non-black women because she nice. She is not controlling. She does not like to argue. She does not insult your intelligence. She does not try to masculate you. She does not wear fake hair (in fact black women pay to wear HER hair). She is much less stressful, and much more of a helpful teammate. She is simply a better option for you."

Retired welder, 75, blames ex-wife for friends thinking he's dead\ - "A retired welder whose phone hasn't rung for months because friends think he is dead realised the error after discovering his own gravestone erected by his ex-wife.    'People think that I'm dead,' said Alan Hattel, 75, from Tayside, Scotland. 'My phone hasn't rung for three or four months. I've been confused by it all but now I know why nobody has been calling."... The 75-year-old, who spent 37 years as a welder before retiring, claimed his ex-wife has bought the plot of land and put up the headstone with the intention of them being buried together.   Both their names appear on the headstone.  'I've never, ever said I wanted to be buried alongside my ex-wife,' said Mr Hattel, who has two grown-up children with his former spouse"

Meme - "I thought the G spot was where the whole gang hang out"
"it can be"

Meme - "Females after screaming at you for 20 mins and then you raise your voice to them once"
"You're so mean to me!!"

Meme - "What's your dirty little secret?"
"My ex told me to drug her and do with her what I wanted... So I drugged her and played video games all night with friends. She still thinks I fucked her multiple times that night."

Woman sells the dust and dirt from her vacuum to a stranger online for $30 - "A woman revealed that she sold the dirt from her vacuum cleaner for $30 - but the dust from her house is far from her most in-demand product.  Ana Dee, from the US, has made a living by selling used items on the internet including toilet scrubbers and dirty water for over a decade.   'I sold the contents of my vacuum for $20 today,' she began in a video. 'However, the buyer wanted a surprise... so I upsold that for $30 and included a lollipop.'... The woman claimed that it was a simple issue of supply and demand, and often found that many were 'jealous' of how 'easy' her work was... Many women shared some of the odd things they sold or did for money.   'Someone contacted me to buy my trash once and explained he basically got satisfaction from being 'humiliated' by what he was wasting his money on,' one revealed in a comment.  'Girl, one guy paid me to run over a hot wheel with my Honda civic!'"

Meme - "GOES TO BAR... SPENDS NOTHING 'I <3 Weiners T-shirt'"

Meme - "Girls wearing band t-shirts *running screaming*
Grown men telling them to name 3 songs *chasing*"

Meme - ""Oh no, the consequences of my actions." Women live life on easy mode right up until they hit 30. After that, they live the life every man has to live, and they can never handle the weight of it."
"I turned 30 this year. I don;t make enough money to to live alone. I've never been in a serious relationship. I miss past versions of myself that I'll never be again. I mourn the different lives I didn't get the chance to live. I go back and forth from feeling lost: to hopeful"

Meme - Brittney Jones: "I still can't believe he snitched on me. I swear if you break into a man's house once and give him some top while he's sleep they label you. I didn't harm any one."
Officer ID: 5629
Arresting Agency: JACKSONVILLE
Name: BRITTNEY LACHELL JONES
Sex: F
Race: BLACK
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 1xx
Charge: SEXUAL BATTERY"
Female entitlement means sexual assault is okay

Meme - "First day in the group: *Classic Smurfette* I'm only here for the memes
Third month in the group: *Sexy Smurfette* STFU and Smurf me"

Meme - Sophia LA
"I understand you want to be friends and I'm ok with that. I'm a busy man for the most part between work and raising my kids that I don't have a lot of extra time. In my extra time I'm trying to improve my life and occasionally seeking out a potential life partner. With that, the distance between us prevents any type of significant relationship and I don't have much time for a pen pal. Sorry."
"Then why did you contact me? Are you a fucking idiot?"
"Ooof I definitely dodged a bullet here. I see why you're so lonely. Goodbye"
Women can't take rejection

Meme - "Husbands Name After Marriage"
Woman: "No"
#GoldDigger #Alimony #Maintenance
"Husbands Property After Divorce"
Woman: "Yes"

IT worker sued boss who marked problems with ‘xx’ as she thought they were kisses - "An IT worker sued for sexual harassment after her “rich and powerful” male boss marked parts of an email where he wanted more information with “xx”, which she thought were kisses.  Karina Gasparova, a project manager, also claimed Aleksander Goulandris’s use of question marks in the same message were code for asking her when she would be “ready to engage in sexual acts”.  ‌In a number of other innocent work-related incidents where she would find a “sinister motive”, Ms Gasparova thought his renaming a file with his initials AJG was an acronym for A Jumbo Genital... when Mr Goulandris asked her when a project would be finished, she told the tribunal he burst out shouting with an “extremely angry voice”, saying “I need date, date, date”.  ‌Ms Gasparova interpreted this as having been asked “the exact date when I would finally agree on sexual contact with him”.  ‌The panel heard later that month that Mr Goulandris had emailed Ms Gasparova asking for information on a project. To indicate what details he required her to fill in he used XX, YY and ???? in the message, written in red.  ‌The tribunal heard she interpreted the Xs as meaning kisses, the Ys as sexual contact of some kind and the question marks as when she would be “ready to engage in sexual acts”'."
Believe Women!

Meme - "You find women in their early or mid twenties attractive? What are you sir, some sort of pedophile?"
The motivations for female anti-"pedophile" virtue signallers are different from male ones

Meme - "Female teachers when I went to school *Manly*
Female teachers now *Hot*"

Meme - TrueOffMyChest: "Being a sexworker has ruined my life
God, I started being a sex worker a while ago, it was because I needed money and I just kept going because of how much confidence I won through it, besides a lot of other stuff. I knew I wanted to do this, it was just my call. I was sure I would never give up on it but I see now, I see how hard is to find a lover. I am only doing online stuff and nothing more, but it is never enough in a relationship. My first boyfriend accepted to be with me knowing what I am doing to earn money. He would start fights from nothing and I never thought the reason is because he does not support my job. I broke up with him because of how bad things were between us. And I said I would stay away from relationships until I fell in love again after a year. Very good at the start but again fights from nothing. One mutual friend from first bf told me he was like that because of my job. And I am mad, why go in a relationship with someone you don't fully agree? Why? And same thing now, I am being ignored from nowhere and I am confused but now I am sure, it is again the job. And I will never have a relationship, never. I am a really loving and caring person, not jealous, with very much humor, understandble and sensitive, but I guess that is not what matters. What matters is that I am showing my naked body. I think I am stupid if I believe this should be nothing but I know it is hard for someone to accept it so why waste time and just make the other person suffer if you will never be okay with this ?"