Jim Fields

As evidenced by the unbridled promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity, we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human. It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as intended by God. It is in this sense that the challenge we currently face is not technological, but anthropological, and it is my hope that the Encyclical Letter to be published within a few days will contribute to answering this challenge.

Our big practical gamble✈️🐯

Hidden VFX: See It Without Seeing It✈️🐯

This man should be one of the most celebrated heroes of WW2. He arguably saved more lives than any other person the entire length of the war. But you probably don't even know his name. This is the story of Father Jacquinot... 🧵1/6

If you've heard of Flying Tigers, on of the first things you think of is shark teeth P-40s. That image stuck with the American public and still shows up in movies etc. today. So where did the idea for painting their planes like that come from? A quick 🧵1/4

🇨🇳 36-year-old left the U.S. for China—now pays $1,000 rent and $100 for groceries for family of 4: It’s my "version of the American Dream." Follow: @RTSG_News

Everyday Shanghai. China, 1980-1990 | Bruno Barbey

What happens when you take a hundred cocky, adventurous, early-twenties American guys and drop them into remote southwest China in 1941? And how did they achieve such a crazy k**l ratio in the air? That’s essentially the story of the Flying Tigers... After years of brutal war with Japan, China’s air force was nearly wiped out, with planes, pilots, and resources basically at zero by winter 1938. So Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling worked with the U.S., recruiting Claire Chennault to build a covert unit: the American Volunteer Group BEFORE Pearl Harbour. These pilots traveled to China as civilians (businessmen, even missionaries!)... anything but soldiers. But in just over half a year (late 1941 to July 1942), fewer than 100 pilots flying already outdated, shark-faced Curtiss P-40 Warhawks achieved a nearly unbelievable 15:1 k**l ratio against Japanese forces across China, Burma, and Thailand. How did they achieve such success? And why is their story not better known?

Casting the General✈️🐯

@BusDownBonnor 一直都是呢。。。

After visiting Hong Kong and Shenzhen, i’ve decided that the most useful skill to learn is no longer AI or Vibecoding bullish on people learning mandarin fr

Deng Xiaoping

@KaiserKuo Feels like DJT would enjoy one of these as a possible alternative from KFC:

My real regret about the delay in Trump’s state visit to China is that we missed what would have been the delicious optics of DJT being in Beijing on the one-year anniversary of “Liberation Day.” Would have loved to see him eat Peking Duck and have it described as a Chinese taco.

Before the Flying Tigers, There Was This✈️🐯

Everything You Learned About WWII Is a Lie✈️🐯

A heartwarming reunion after 70 years❤️ In 1945, at a U.S. Flying Tigers airbase hospital in Chongqing, American pilot Allen Larsen met a cute 5-year-old Chinese girl in a white dress with pigtails. He gave her a lovely doll and they took a photo together. The little girl, nicknamed “Doudou,豆豆” was the daughter of a nurse at the base. Years later, in 2012, Doudou’s second brother discovered the old photo in a Flying Tigers photo collection. Her life had been tough—her mother died in a car accident in 1946, and her father passed away the following year. She was adopted by a couple named Wang, renamed Wang Zhi王智, and moved across China before settling in Anshan, Liaoning. She studied hard, entered Peking University’s Geology Department, and later worked in petroleum exploration in Xinjiang with her husband. In 2014, at over 70 years old, Wang Zhi traveled to the U.S. to celebrate Allen Larsen’s 90th birthday—and they took another photo together.

Preparing to respond to 1 email at work

The research behind this is wild. Your brain can’t flip from full alert to sleep like a light switch. It needs a runway. And reading builds it faster than almost anything else. A University of Sussex study found that just 6 minutes of reading cut stress by 68%, more than music (61%), tea (54%), walking (42%), or video games (21%). The effect is surprisingly physical. When you read, your nervous system shifts from fight-or-flight into rest-and-digest mode. Heart rate slows, breathing deepens, muscles release tension. The neuropsychologist who ran the study, Dr. David Lewis, described it as entering “an altered state of consciousness,” where focused imagination activates the part of your brain that tells your stress response to stand down. A 2021 randomized trial tested this directly. Researchers split nearly 1,000 people into two groups: read a book in bed for seven nights, or don’t. After one week, 42% of readers reported better sleep versus 28% of non-readers. Nothing else changed. Now compare that with what 86% of Americans actually do before bed: scroll their phones for an average of 38 minutes a night. A 2025 Norwegian study of 45,000 university students found that every additional hour of screen time in bed raised insomnia risk by 59% and cut sleep by 24 minutes. A separate American Cancer Society study of 122,000 adults found daily screen use before bed was tied to 50 fewer minutes of sleep per week. Screens hit you with two sleep-blockers at once. Blue light suppresses melatonin, the hormone that tells your body it’s time to sleep, by about 50% according to a Harvard study. But the bigger problem is the content itself. News, social media, work emails, all of it fires up your brain’s threat-detection mode and spikes your stress hormones right when they’re supposed to be at their lowest point of the day. A physical book sidesteps both problems entirely. The long game matters too. A Yale study tracked 3,635 adults over 12 years and found that people who read 3.5+ hours per week were 23% less likely to die during the study. That worked out to living roughly 2 years longer, regardless of gender, wealth, or education. Books beat newspapers and magazines. The researchers pointed to deep, sustained reading creating a kind of workout for the brain that protects it as it ages. So the 5-10 minutes he’s describing? The science says 6 minutes is the threshold where your body starts winding down. His brain is switching off its stress response and easing into a state where sleep becomes almost automatic.

anthony bourdain at park hyatt tokyo, 2008