For the first time in six or seven years. Gung hei etc to all in advance.
A slightly surreal photo taken in Macau a few days ago…
And an amusing little tale from Futurism…
…as NBC News reports, users on online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are making big bucks off of Musk’s astonishing track record for being wrong about the future. Case in point, Polymarket user David Bensoussan made a ten percent return after betting $10,000 that Musk wouldn’t follow through on his threat of forming a new political party following his falling out with president Donald Trump.
He also successfully bet against Musk’s prediction that Tesla would launch an “unsupervised” version of its erroneously-named “Full Self-Driving” software by the end of 2025.
To Bensoussan, it’s a matter of principle.
“He does have a solid fan base, and so if I can help separate them from some of their money, I’m always happy to do that,” he told NBC. “He has a habit of exaggerating timelines, and of saying he’s going to do these amazing things and attaching more immediacy than what his intent may necessarily be.”
…In total, Bensoussan’s ploy to bet against Musk’s wildly optimistic predictions has paid off, garnering him over $36,000.
As you embark on your trip to the Mainland, I am reminded of my first ten-day tour of Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing in January 1979.
Having recently ventured off the beaten track around Foshan and Shunde, I am once again—and more convincingly than ever—astounded by what has been achieved over the past 40 years, even far beyond the first-tier cities.
There is nothing wrong with China or the Chinese people. The tragedy lies in the current political redirection. To secure its own legitimacy, the Communist Party is busy rewriting history. Driven by a paranoia regarding “evil forces”—which, in their definition, includes anyone remotely critical of the Party—they are dragging the country back toward the mindset of 1968. This ideological regression, rooted in a 1917 Marxist-Leninist framework, is inevitably strangling the economy. We are witnessing a Great Leap Backward in real-time.
Unfortunately, this has also infected Hong Kong. It is deeply unsettling to witness the “reinterpretations,” the systemic brainwashing, and the outright falsehoods being fed to a city that once prided itself on its clarity and freedom.
We must ask ourselves what history will ultimately value. Decades from now, what is more likely to appear on our street signs: a “John Lee Road”, or a “Jimmy Lai Boulevard”?
P.S. My draft comment redacted by Google AI