Yana

The FT is really in basic anti-China propaganda mode these days, it's not even remotely subtle x.com/i/status/20616…

She'll soon be "The Crazy Ex Girlfriend" I’m starting to think she might be crazy for real, I got nervous watching this video 🤣(you play that role to good) via Nikki Howard

Absolutely hilarious for the FT to argue the West is losing to China because "liberal market democracies operate with greater accountability to voters." Hilarious and, of course, absurdly wrong. China is winning precisely because it's obsessively focused on delivering for its people: infrastructure, improving living standards, reducing poverty, etc. "Liberal market democracies" are losing precisely because they forgot who democracies are supposed to be accountable to. Src: ft.com/content/42fc2e…

It always astonishes me how there is virtually ZERO public debate - or even public awareness - in Europe about the decisions that will most shape ordinary people's lives. These days, the EU is drafting a new anti-China legal framework where - quite literally - the more affordable and competitive Chinese products are, the more illegal they'd become. You'd think EU citizens would want to be informed about such things - as it couldn't be more consequential for their prosperity. Yet I bet virtually no EU citizen is even aware of it, beyond a vague sense that there is some sort of trade dispute going on. So what's going on exactly? It all centers around a new legal instrument the EU is drafting called the "overcapacity instrument" (euobserver.com/218003/china-t…). First of all, the very notion of "overcapacity" is pretty ridiculous to begin with, especially the way it's being defined by the EU, as it basically means being competitive enough to export. By this definition of "overcapacity," pretty much every European industry that's ever run a trade surplus - German cars, French wine, Italian fashion - has been guilty of "overcapacity." I'm not even exaggerating: if you read this study by the EU Parliament on "Industrial overcapacities, with a focus on China" (europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes…), they define "overcapacity" as building more capacity than your domestic market can absorb. So the moment you build capacity to export abroad, you're in "overcapacity." Utterly ridiculous. And what this "overcapacity instrument" is about is creating a permanent legal mechanism for the EU to block Chinese competition across whole sectors of the economy, if they happen to be in "overcapacity." In effect, this means that if China is competitive globally in a given sector in such a way that it exports a lot, that's proof of overcapacity, and legally it'd mean that the entire sector can be restricted from the EU market. Which means it really, factually, is a legal framework where the more affordable and competitive your products are, the more illegal they become. Which is a CRAZY economic concept! 🤦‍♂️ Please note that it's different from the anti-subsidy legal instrument, which the EU has already put in place in 2023 (the "Foreign Subsidies Regulation": competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/foreign-subsid…). This "overcapacity instrument" would be above and beyond this: it wouldn't even matter if a particular sector was subsidized by the Chinese government or not, the mere fact of its competitiveness in exports would be grounds for restrictions in the EU. It doesn't take a genius to understand how badly this could impact everyday people: this is European consumers being forced to pay more for worse products by law, so that uncompetitive European firms don't have to improve. Politicians frame it as avoiding a "China shock 2.0" but really this is choosing an even steeper self-inflicted decline than is already the case, where EU citizens would subsidize mediocre EU companies that would have even less pressure to catch up. It's a hidden tax: subsidies for uncompetitive firms paid by consumers instead of governments, which in turn makes them less incentivized to become competitive. The first "China shock" did de-industrialize Europe somewhat, but at least it made things cheaper for European consumers. If this becomes Europe's response to a second "China shock" not only it'd make everything more expensive but it'd do nothing for EU industry: you don't become competitive by banning the competition... Look at China itself: the way it industrialized was NOT by banning Western firms but on the contrary by welcoming them strategically and learning from them. You learn to compete by... competing, duh! What I find most shocking in all of this isn't even the policy itself - you can make arguments for and against protectionism, and reasonable people can disagree. What's shocking is that virtually no European media outlet is explaining any of this to the public. This is unarguably one of the single most consequential economic decisions the EU will make this decade, affecting the price of everything, and it's being drafted in near-total silence. No newspaper is running the headline "EU plans to make Chinese goods illegal if they're too affordable" - even though that's essentially what's happening. But that's what you call a "democracy" with "freedom of expression" these days apparently...

Sam Harris himself

🎬 Backrooms (2026) One of the internet's greatest success stories. In May 2019, an anonymous user on 4chan posted a grainy photo of an empty room. Sickly yellow walls, harsh fluorescent lighting, damp carpet, and an overwhelming sense that something was deeply wrong. Someone added a caption claiming that if you're not careful, you can "noclip out of reality" and end up trapped in an endless maze of identical rooms known as the Backrooms. Nobody knew where the photo was taken. For five years, the image spread across forums, Reddit, YouTube, and social media, evolving from a creepy image into one of the internet's most fascinating pieces of modern folklore. Then, in May 2024, four users on Discord finally traced the image using the Wayback Machine. The photograph originated from a 2002 renovation photo taken inside a former furniture store at 807 Oregon Street in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. But by then, the truth hardly mattered. The myth had already become bigger than its origin. The Backrooms entered a completely new phase in January 2022 when a 16-year-old filmmaker named Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute short film called The Backrooms (Found Footage). Having taught himself Blender and VFX techniques, Parsons transformed a niche internet creepypasta into something cinematic and terrifyingly believable. The video exploded in popularity and quickly became one of the defining horror projects of YouTube's generation. Hollywood took notice. Just a few years later, A24 greenlit a feature film adaptation and handed the project to Parsons himself. Operating under the codename Effigy, the production built a massive 30,000-square-foot Backrooms maze in Vancouver. The crew reportedly tested dozens of shades of yellow to recreate the unsettling atmosphere that made the original image so iconic, while the scale of the set became a story in itself. Born in 2005, the same year YouTube launched Kane Parsons became A24's youngest director ever. At only 20 years old, he achieved something almost unimaginable: turning an internet urban legend into a major theatrical event. The story of Backrooms is remarkable not because of where it started, but because of what it became. An anonymous image posted on a forum evolved into a collaborative online myth, inspired millions of viewers, launched the career of a young filmmaker, and eventually became a global horror phenomenon. Few pieces of internet culture have made the journey from obscure message board post to mainstream cinema. The Backrooms did. All because of a single photograph and a simple idea that tapped into a universal fear, the feeling of being lost in a place that looks familiar, yet somehow feels completely wrong.

Correct exercises for the lumbar spine [📹 Dr Son]

Prism Child Remembers Where She Came From Before Coming To Earth Kids are so tuned in. They haven't forgotten Who they are or Where they've been. It's us adults who need reminding sometimes. ✨🙌🏾💫 © Tara Hegerty

So cute! 🫶 These ducks are ducking down to avoid the bridge overhead. 🤣🤣

Border collies when there's no sheep to herd..🐕🐾😅

Australian female doctors making a statement in Gaza: 📍We are filming this video because we could die at any moment. 📍70-80% of our patients are children and pregnant women. 📍 I delivered a baby from a woman who was 9 months pregnant and whose head had been severed.

This is absolutely insane

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The job of a German chancellor to call the Russian president, period. No joke, period. Germany has some responsibility in this world. The biggest mistake of Mertz is that he did not pick up the phone the first day and x.com/ivan_8848/stat… say I'm the new chancellor of Germany and I would like to have a discussion with you, President Putin, because that's his most important job in the world.

Adam and eve didn’t have the knowledge of good and evil yet. How could they understand disobedience? That means evil and good are all done by God

Manifesting a summer like Hiroshi Nagai’s artwork

Pete Hegseth takes a break from promoting a $1.5 trillion military budget and wars at every corner on the planet, to warn us about the dangers of a military buildup in China - which has not fought a war in 46 years.

this is real performance art

Imagine this was Moscow or Beijing? Its not its Holland in the centre of EU values and decency. A pregnant woman is thrown to the ground, dragged by the hair- Her husband of course reacted and fought the Police.

Via @SWagenknecht Und eigentlich müsste die #EU jetzt auch Sanktionen gegenüber den #USA verhängen wegen Iran, zB Starbucks schließen und amerikanische Künstler von deutsche bzw. europäischen Bühnen jagen. Die Doppelmoral ist wirklich unerträglich!