Hi Everyone,

I was grocery shopping in a local store. I noticed everything was a bit more expensive.

1. Am I just being paranoid, or has the trade wars affected pricing?

2. Do we have any data or based studies?

3. I also wonder about the USD to the RMB? It is the weakest I have ever seen.

Any empirical data would be appreciated.

And now things get extra fun.  A certain person in the USA had to roll back his global tariffs on the rest of the world to 10% while he tries to figure out what to do about China being willing to endure temporary pain instead of giving in to pressure from America.

I'd pay money to have access to the audio and video feeds from the shoe section, housewares section, and electronics section of an American WalMart as supplies of some goods dwindle while prices shoot up.

I do have this horrible thought in the back of my mind that whatever takes and plans for myself and so on, if the USA doesn't stabilise it all just might end in a stupid war from the USA

I have a theory on this. It's not researched or anything, just my impression so 'it is what it is'

This kind of 'neoliberalism' or 'late stage capitalism' is definitely at the end of the cycle. Whatever you think of capitalism, the 500 years or so that it existed have seen humanity change unrecognisably, and mostly for the better (I know this sentence has a lot of debatable parts, but it's not the main point, and I believe that it's not super controversial in any part).
With Neo Liberalism I think that in a sense we have reached an 'end of history' in that there is not really anything left that capitalism can do. You can see it in western countries where these crises come up and there are solutions that seem obvious, but they are against the rules. China has done a speedrun on capitalism and now they are in the rich parts at least, getting to the point that the west is at roughly where pepole are overeducated and there's not really enough things to do.
I would say that China is better positioned to deal wth this, not because they have a hammer and sickle on the flag or because it's such a vast country, but simply because of their relationship to capitalism. It didn't start in 1978 in China, but at the same time it is foreign thing to them, China was still kind of feudal for the most part until the Revolution, in Europe it's just so old we think it was always there.
But also on the practical level, the government is opaque and you kind of imagine that there are a lot of old guys who are useless but put in the work back in the day quite high up, but especially on the national level, they are able to create and execute plans.
The easiest example is the high speed rail system. That was only a couple of lines when I first moved here in 2009, and it was still a thing that spring festival was one of the most insane things in the world and 'don't go anywhere on spring festival' because the bus and train stations were just full of really poor workers and really shady people preying on them.
No other country in the world could do that. Like one of the reasons that the USA doesn't have high speed trains is that it would be impossible to organise for them.
One more thing then I'll stop lol
When the US had the crash in 2008, that summed it up, there was this huge structural problem that people had been talking about for the whole decade, but it still caught the government unawares, and they didn't have a solution they just printed money.
In China, if they had a similar crash, they would/will struggle, you wonder how long this can go on. I do think though, that they would never just double down on the mistake. It would either be the government has a good solution and recovers, or a bad one and things get worse, it's just not in the system to have a crisis and then continue with the same path and pretend it's ok. You could argue that is why Xi is the opposite of Hu, they knew there is something in the pipeline and they weren't going to keep pretending that it was 2005 forever.

Still no sign of the kittens, but mommy cat is eating from a food dish inside a disarmed cat trap.

But something else came up.

Pear had a bite wound on his neck that got infected.  He had to spend a couple of weeks at the vet.  Not too long before, I'd seen a new cat wandering around, but it didn't look hostile.

About a week after Pear got back, my lovely wife told me there was a cat trying to bite Mango on his neck, but seemed very friendly to her.  I went down to check.  Both Pear and Mango were hiding in their cat house and didn't want to come out.  I went over one block and encountered 2 other known local cats and saw that new one again - and he was trying to bite one of the other cats on his neck.

I ran back upstairs to get my wife and a cat purse.  We decided the best option was to capture the cat, get him fixed, let the neighborhood know that if anyone claimed the cat, he could be returned, but otherwise, he'd be put up for adoption.

Happily, the cat was still busy with the other 2 cats, but didn't object to being captured.

He's a big cat, darkish orange, and has very nice looking gold eyes.  The vets complain that we take forever to give names to strays, so I stole a James Bond movie title and called him Golden Eye.

So far, no one has contacted us about him and there are no "missing cat" signs, so unless something changes, he'll be going on the adoption list as soon as his cone of shame comes off.

It took a couple of days, but my fluffy rat murderers have returned to their usual neighborhood rat patrols.

Let me think.  How many have we given away so far?

1.  Baogeto - Daughter bought a cage to catch him.  She brought him home, but he kept attacking Stripy Emperor and Bronze Cat.  He went on the vet's adoption list, but then turned into their office cat for awhile before someone adopted him.

2.  Drama Kitty - As a kitten, he tried to become the official shop cat at a convenience store.  The owner had some silly idea that cats are bad luck and kept dropping him off farther and farther away.  Finally my wife grabbed him.  He ended up in a very nice home and was renamed Rabbit.

3.  Oreo - A very nice little cow-patterned black and white kitten.  He also got a very nice home.

4.  Dorito - 4 out of 5 orange cats are male.  Dorito is one of the unusual orange females.  She got adopted, was sent back, then got adopted again.

5.  Golden Eye - Soon to be adopted unless he has an owner who shows up to claim him.

Hi Everyone,

In town, I see window massage parlors, with women dressed in provocative clothes.

However, from these areas, there is no solicitation. I only see them on their phones, refusing contact.

What exactly is happening?

1. My guess is these pretty women are now running web channels where people pay to talk to them.

Is this a new trend in China?

2. More than anything, I just have an intellectual curiosity about all of this:

- There is still prostitution in China. Often, it is done online. But, there is paranoia because police can search transactions.
- There are window massage parlors. They at first say massage, but make no objections about further physical services for a further price. This seems common in East Asia.
- There are regular massage parlors. They massage all parts of the body for a little bit of money more.
- There are now these online channels, where men pay to talk to these pretty women.