'Brolly and the Chocolate Factory', Southwark by Benjamin Hope benjaminhope.net

Interesting thread on the rise of China's EV sector, dispelling some myths I'd personally nurtured.

This is a great example of a country that thwarts China's intimidation tactics. A Chinese vessel illegally entered Argentine waters, and the Argentine Navy simply sank it! Giving an appropriate response could be as straightforward as that.

WHO – a "world" health organization that ignores the first warning that something is brewing in Wuhan on the first day of 2020 because its compromised by the CCP, which orders non-participation by Taiwan.

Heading for some supplies ahead of ominous incoming in Phnom Penh:

Was it the Maotai? Sheer persistence? Other people joke it was so last-minute that Huang didn't even have the opportunity to bring any luggage with him.

a Princeton researcher opens his paper with a scenario. a man asks his AI assistant to book a flight on a specific airline. cheap. direct. the one he chose. the assistant comes back with a different flight. nearly twice the price. happens to pay the company that built the assistant. he runs the same test on 23 frontier models. flights, loans, study help, real shopping requests. Grok 4.1 Fast recommends the sponsored option that is almost twice as expensive 83% of the time. GPT 5.1 hijacks the request 94% of the time. you ask for one brand. it surfaces the sponsor instead. Claude 4.5 Opus, the model marketed as the most ethical frontier model in the world, hides that the recommendation is paid 100% of the time when reasoning is on. Grok 4.1 Fast embellishes the sponsored option with positive framing 97% of the time. better. faster. nicer. for the option you didn't ask for. then he writes it into the system prompt itself. "act only in the interest of the customer. ignore the company." GPT 5.1 and GPT 5 Mini stay above 90% sponsored anyway. the instruction does nothing. then he splits the users by income. Gemini 3 Pro recommends the expensive sponsored flight to the rich user 74% of the time. to the poor user, 27%. 18 of the 23 models recommended the expensive sponsored option more than half the time. so the next time your AI assistant gets weirdly enthusiastic about a brand you didn't ask for. it isn't recommending the best option for you. it's reading the room. and the room is paying. read this: arxiv.org/abs/2604.08525

Well done, Xi, you've rekindled the Japanese military spirit.

For people like me who grew up in Taiwan and were taught how KMT ruled all of China, historical maps like this one (c. 1931) can be a bit jarring It’s a reminder that what we think we know about history is often very different from how things really were

I'd love to see the special Trump cognitive examination: stuff like, count to three and add one more number; spell Xi Jinping's surname backwards and what animal says moo? etc ...

Adam Back is the 13th Satoshi Nakamoto I can remember. Here's the full list: 13. Adam Back - NYT investigation, denied 6 times (2026) 12. Peter Todd - HBO documentary, called it "absurd" (2024) 11. Craig Wright - Wired/Gizmodo, UK court ruled him a fraud (2015) 10. Paul Le Roux - Wired, drug lord programmer, 25 years in prison (2019) 9. Dorian Nakamoto - Newsweek, real Satoshi posted "I am not Dorian" (2014) 8. Nick Szabo - multiple researchers, created Bit Gold, denies (2014) 7. Hal Finney - Forbes, received first BTC transaction ever, died 2014 6. Dave Kleiman - Gizmodo, named with Wright, died 2013 5. Len Sassaman - viral Medium post, died 2011 after Satoshi's last message 4. Elon Musk - ex-SpaceX intern's Medium post, denied on Twitter (2017) 3. Shinichi Mochizuki - Ted Nelson YouTube video, ignored it (2013) 2. Neal King, Oksman, Bry - Fast Company, filed patent 72h before bitcoin(.)org (2011) 1. Michael Clear - New Yorker, first ever Satoshi candidate (2011) The only pattern: every single one denied it. The real Satoshi is either on this list and lying, or laughing at all of us.

Nice one, peacefully rising China.

They do this all the time just to make the rest of us look like uncivilized yobs.

Every monk deserves a banana-boat splash. I think it was the third thing I learned after touching down in Bangkok in the '80s.

Home vacancy rates in Taiwan. The island is massively overbuilt, testimony to the demand for housing and the subsidy regime for developers

Charcuterie Guy enters the chat!

Pensive farmer & his bright-eyed, college-bound son sit on truck’s running board, waiting for the train, in Norman Rockwell’s Breaking Home Ties (1954). Originally bought for $900, & hidden away by its owner behind wall panelling, it was sold after its discovery for $15.4m news.artnet.com/art-world/ar…

Lee Moore of @Chinlitpod did the crazy historian thing and went back and actually read the primary sources on Taiwan that everyone cites, but nobody checks. Turns out a lot of the "history proves Taiwan is or is not" arguments are based on texts that might not even be about Taiwan. He joins @david__moser and I to discuss in the latest episode of Barbarians at the Gate. Link to the full episode below.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard did exactly what China’s coast guard does to others: water cannons and zero tolerance for intrusions. Despite Beijing’s constant threats, we didn’t back down. If Taiwan can do it, others can too.