Eric Masaba (马重智)

Why I'm opposed to Europeans buying air conditioners. When I or my fellow Chinese visit Europe, we want to see authentic European building facades, unpolluted by air conditioning units hanging from 19th century walls. We want to see Europeans authentically avoid the midday heat with their siestas. Also, can you also imagine if every European gets to live the same quality of life as middle class Chinese? We would need another Earth to support such lifestyles.

@Math_files In 2007 I approached Steve Jobs' former chief evangelist (who is from near San Francisco) pitching my taxi hailing idea (based on credit contagion modelling from a hedge fund project). He was skeptical - you can see his response. I had filed a patent and proved it viable. #Uber

"The world loves builders. But it remembers dreamers." Have you ever had an idea so big that the world literally wasn't ready for it? In the 1830s, a man named Charles Babbage sat down with a pencil and paper. He designed a machine that could solve any mathematical problem. It had a memory. It had a processor. It used punch cards for input. It could make decisions based on its own results. Sounds like a laptop, right? Wrong. This was 100 years before electricity was even used in homes. He was designing a computer made of brass and steel. Steam-powered. The size of a small house. He never built it. His hands never finished the machine. But it didn't matter. Because the machine he drew in his notebooks was perfect. The logic was complete. Every single part of a modern computer was there on his paper. The only problem was the world. The metal workers of his time could not shape parts precisely enough. The gears couldn't spin smoothly enough. His mind was running at 2026 speed, but the factories were stuck in 1830. Before Babbage, machines were just calculators. They could do one thing and one thing only. Add and subtract. Babbage changed everything. His Analytical Engine had a "Store" where numbers lived. It had a "Mill" where the work got done. He used punched cards to tell the machine what to do. That made it programmable. It could switch tasks. It could look at an answer and decide what to do next based on that answer. Think about that for a second. A machine that could change its behavior. That is the definition of a computer. People think building something is the hard part. They think if you don't finish the product, you have failed. Babbage proved that is a lie. The design was the true work. The blueprint was the invention. The rest? That is just manufacturing. He did not need to build it to prove it was real. He had already created the essential idea. He had already birthed the future in his mind. Maybe you have an idea that feels impossible right now. Maybe the technology isn't quite there. Maybe the people around you don't get it. Maybe you are waiting for the perfect moment to start building. Babbage teaches us that the first step is always the blueprint. The vision. The plan. You don't need to finish everything today. You don't need to have all the resources. You just need to draw it. Write it down. Imagine it completely. The metal couldn't keep up with the man's mind. But history still calls him the father of the computer. Because the idea is everything. So, dream big. Draw the plans. The rest of the world will eventually catch up to you. The most powerful thing you can create is not the thing itself. It is the idea of the thing. That lives forever. That belongs to you. And no one can ever take that away.

How a resolution was found for the "Sound Dues" The Øresund (often called the Sound) is a 118‑km strait whose narrowest point—between Helsingør (Denmark) and Helsingborg (Sweden)—is only about 4 km wide. Its geography made it impossible for ships entering or leaving the Baltic to avoid Danish-controlled waters, giving Denmark a unique ability to regulate and tax maritime trade. This strategic position is why the Sound became the site of one of the longest-running toll regimes in European history: the Sound Dues. 💰 What the Sound Dues were Introduced: 1429 by King Eric of Pomerania Purpose: A toll on all foreign ships passing through the Øresund Collection point: Helsingør, enforced militarily from Kronborg Castle Economic importance : Up to two‑thirds of Denmark’s state income in the 16th–17th centuries Tax evolution: In 1567, shifted from a per‑ship fee to a 1–2% ad valorem tax on cargo value Enforcement: Ships refusing to stop could be fired upon from Helsingør and Helsingborg

What the Øresund Strait is The Øresund (often called the Sound) is a 118‑km strait whose narrowest point—between Helsingør (Denmark) and Helsingborg (Sweden)—is only about 4 km wide. Its geography made it impossible for ships entering or leaving the Baltic to avoid Danish-controlled waters, giving Denmark a unique ability to regulate and tax maritime trade. This strategic position is why the Sound became the site of one of the longest-running toll regimes in European history: the Sound Dues. 💰 What the Sound Dues were Introduced: 1429 by King Eric of Pomerania Purpose: A toll on all foreign ships passing through the Øresund Collection point: Helsingør, enforced militarily from Kronborg Castle Economic importance : Up to two‑thirds of Denmark’s state income in the 16th–17th centuries Tax evolution: In 1567, shifted from a per‑ship fee to a 1–2% ad valorem tax on cargo value Enforcement: Ships refusing to stop could be fired upon from Helsingør and Helsingborg

CHINA WATCH: US Empire Tests Global Tribute System in Hormuz Trump’s “Guardian of Hormuz” blockade >>>with fees and control is the blueprint. What they impose here (blockades, tolls, “protection” rackets) will be rolled out against China in the Malacca Strait and South China Sea, and around the world.Using the US-Japan-Philippines trilateral alliance to encircle and extract tribute from sovereign waters. Iran is right: “We have always been and will remain the true Guardian FOREVER.” TRUMP: “USA will be ‘GUARDIAN OF HORMUZ’” Textbook imperialism. Hormuz today = China + global chokepoints tomorrow. Reject the US tribute system. Defend sovereignty.

BREAKING: 🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump says he used a Nuclear weapon to hit Iran and stop developing their own nuclear weapon: “They were gonna have a nuclear weapon within two weeks had I not hit them with the nuclear."

In 1940, a pair of identical twin boys were born in Ohio and placed for adoption just weeks after birth. They were sent to different families who had no contact with each other. Neither family knew much about the other. Each set of parents, independently, chose to name their new son James. The two boys grew up in separate homes, in separate towns, living what appeared to be entirely separate lives. But as researchers would later discover, the parallels running through those lives were almost impossible to believe. Both boys went by the nickname Jim. Both married a woman named Linda, then divorced her. Both then remarried a woman named Betty. Both had a son and named him James Alan. Both owned a dog at some point in their childhood and gave it the same name: Toy. Both had worked in law enforcement. Both drove the same model of Chevrolet. Both had built a white bench around a tree in their backyard. Neither Jim knew the other existed until 1979, when they were 39 years old and finally reunited. The case of James Springer and James Lewis, known ever since as the Jim Twins, became one of the most studied examples in the history of twin research. University of Minnesota researchers used their reunion as a landmark moment in understanding how much of human personality, preference, and behavior is shaped by genetics rather than environment. Two men raised by strangers in different towns. Same name. Same marriages. Same dog. Same sons. Same bench in the backyard. Some things, it turns out, run deeper than circumstance.

🇷🇺🇧🇪 Belgian automotive designer of Citroën, BMW X5 and X6 & Kia Pierre Leclercq received Russian citizenship He is now officially a citizen of Russia. The appointment was signed by Vladimir Putin. *Beyond BMW, Kia & Citroën, Leclercq also directed global design teams for Ford, Rolls-Royce, Mini, and China's Great Wall Motors. *industry analysts expect him to join Russia's domestic automotive market

#botd Bernadette Lafont, seen here with François Truffaut on the set of "Une belle fille comme moi" (1972)

🎬 Bernadette Lafont, André Dussollier y François Truffaut durante el rodaje de "Une belle fille comme moi" (1972).

Les sondages ciné sont des trains qui roulent ds la nuit et, ce WE, ils s'arrêtent à la station Truffaut Joie de le célébrer et souffrance de se rappeler son départ il y a 40ans Quel est votre film préféré de François Truffaut ? Rep unique jusqu'au 27/10 23h au #SondageTruffaut

Une belle fille comme moi (François Truffaut, 1972)

Eyes are on Muscat, Oman today, as Iranian, Qatari, and possibly Pakistani decision-makers descend on the Gulf nation for discussions surrounding a transit framework for the Strait of Hormuz. Per reports, specifically from regional news outlets and @BashaReport, Omani officials hope to secure a framework where the Median Transit Lane, a transit route that separates the pre-war inbound and outbound lanes, will be opened for free commercial maritime traffic through the strait.

Your bank does not have your money. Read that again and check your balance. When you deposit $10,000, the bank keeps a sliver and lends the rest into existence as new claims. Before the Fed scrapped reserve requirements entirely in March 2020, the legal minimum sat at 10%. Now it is zero. That means the same dollar you think is sitting in your account has been promised to five, ten, twenty other people at the same time. Everyone holds a receipt. The gold is not in the vault. This is fraud dressed up as finance. If a warehouse issued twenty claims on the same crate of grain, a court would put the operator in prison. Do it with money, get a bailout and a corner office. The FDIC exists precisely because this system cannot survive an honest morning where depositors show up wanting what they were told is theirs. Silicon Valley Bank died in 36 hours in March 2023 for exactly this reason: the deposits were long gone, sunk into long-dated bonds, and $42 billion walked out the door in a single day. 100% reserve banking ends the con. A deposit is a deposit. The bank warehouses your money, charges you a storage fee, and cannot touch it. If you want your money lent out, you buy a time deposit or a bond and you knowingly take the risk and the yield. Two separate contracts. No overlapping claims. No pretending a demand deposit and an investment are the same thing. Ludwig von Mises worked this out over a century ago. Credit expansion that fractional reserves make possible is the engine of every boom and every bust: cheap fake savings pour into projects that never should have started, the malinvestment piles up, and the correction arrives whether you want it or not. 2008 was not an accident. It was the design working as intended. You have been trained to call bank runs a crisis. A bank run is depositors discovering the truth and acting on it.

Tokyo has a building whose entire job is to air condition other buildings. One plant in Shinjuku produces 65,000 tons of cooling capacity, roughly the output of 20,000 home AC units, and pipes chilled water underground to more than 20 skyscrapers at once. The mechanism is called district cooling. Rather than every tower installing its own chillers and cooling towers, one central plant chills water with massive compressors and steam absorption chillers, then pushes it through insulated pipes beneath the streets. Each skyscraper just runs a heat exchanger. That giant fan visible from the observation deck is one building rejecting the heat of an entire district. The math is why it wins. A chiller sized for one building has to survive that building's single worst hour. A plant sized for 20 buildings shares capacity, because offices, hotels, and department stores all hit peak load at different times. Central plants also run machines far bigger and more efficient than anything that fits on a rooftop, and they free the top floors of every connected tower, some of the most valuable real estate on the planet. The plant generates its own electricity with gas turbines too. When the grid fails, it keeps cooling and powering the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building next door. Tokyo's disaster command center rides out blackouts on a neighborhood air conditioner. The system started in 1971, before most of the skyscrapers it now serves existed. Tokyo laid the cooling grid first, then built the skyline on top of it.

Guys as an American visiting the UK I’m telling you ITS BAD because there is no escape. Theres just. NO AIR CONDITIONING and next to no breeze. It’s bad folks. And I say this as someone who lives in an area that can get up to 104 f and very humid

@Omolomo_o Because they played like footballers not like wrestlers😂

السف شغال

This is my incredibly easy solution to property valuation, borrowed from the Danish monarchy in the Middle Ages.

That’s genuinely insane. My “favourite” UK-China comparison is Hinkley Point C vs the city of Shenzhen. > 1980 Shenzhen SEZ announced > 1981 Hinkley Point C announced Today Hinkley Point C is still incomplete with yet more delays. Unit 1 expected to come online in 2030 (I highly doubt it). In comparison Shenzhen went from a network of fishing villages with a GDP of $37 million to a mega city with a GDP of $557 billion. It has two operational nuclear power plants. It is genuinely hard to describe the state of Britain if you have not visited newly developed parts of the world. Practically nothing has been built in Britain in the last 50 years, it isn’t just stagnating, it’s dying.