Learn English by reading news everyday. This is what I have read today.

Norway (1st)
Finland (2nd)
Sweden (3rd)
Denmark (4th)

...
Iran (174th)
Vietnam (175th)
Djibouti (176th)
China (177th)
Turkmenistan (178th)
North Korea (179th)
Eritrea (180th)

It's not surprising to see that the author is Chinese, as he clearly knows much better than most of western scholars about the development of disinformation campaign of our govt. Yet the campaign is still ongoing, the trending is unstoppable.

An interesting investigation report conducted by AP basically told a lot about what happened on the internet in 2020.

It all started from Wuhan, a bustling but low-profile city where a mysterious novel virus was discovered. Almost at the same time the narrative of the origin of the virus started to emerge and different variants of narrative went viral later and transmitted much faster than the virus itself.

Finally, the first day the WHO experts team spent in Wuhan, if not includes the preceding 14 days spent in quarantine.

I'm interested in this case because of how much money has been involved in it. He is not even the biggest fish targeted by the DOJ's China Initiative, which is I think a kind of racist political policy by the previous Trump administration, solely judged from its name.

I remember one example is the chairman of Harvard's chemistry department, who was a prominent scientist in the academical world. But he was involved in far less money than Gang Chen's case.

Chen has also been granted more titles in China. For example in just one city Wuhan, my hometown, he was given the “Top Talent
Wuhan City Partner,” and “3551 Optics Valley Talent Plan” awards, and he has received huge amount of money from Wuhan under his own name, not related to MIT. Not mention that he has tight connection with Shenzhen Govt, and he helped MIT build the relation with the SUSTech university of Shenzhen. So how deep is this guy rooted in China?

Here is the criminal complaint of Chen:
https://www.wwlp.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2021/01/Chen-Gang-criminal-complaint.pdf

Here is a letter from his ~100 MIT colleagues:

An interesting finding: the country who started the trade war suffered more than the targeted country. A lesson from history can never be learned.

But the author didn't mention the wine industry in Australia, since China has also imposed a heavy tariff on it. I remember when the news appeared on social media, it incurred a firestorm, everybody seemed to support Australia wine. Also it was a pain for Chinese consumers because it meant the food safety issue is deteriorating.

A social media addiction is like binge eating

I came across this article while trying to make a sentence with the word "binge", and it turned out to be a thought-provoking reading.

In this passage, the author makes an analagy between an eating disorder and social media addiction, whose danger is well-informed by people. However, people struggle to curb their behavior day after day. On the one hand, screens have extremely infused our society. No need to mention that a growing number of occupations today require active presence online, such as marketing and programming jobs.

Because we need to continue to consume both food and social media, those dependencies cannot be handled by the quick-mix method, cold turkey (quit tobacco, alcohol, or drugs immediately).

Like patients who need to take control of their eating, we can try to take control of our social life, starting with assessing our relationship to social media and screen use in general. For example: Is my relationship with social media healthy? Does it reflect my values? At the end of each day, how has my time on screens helped me improve myself? What is one modification I can commit to bringing about sustained change with screen time in my life? If I think of every megabyte as a bite of food, what percentage of what I consumed online today were empty calories (they supply food energy but bring no health benefit)?

Creating more fulfilling patterns(make a phone call to your friends rather than watch their posts) is a way to fill the social media void. Withdrawal symptoms are inevitable and recidivism is very high. But if we tame the beast of social media by moderating our diet of screen time, hopefully, we can realign our priorities and live healthier lives.

The headline image reminds me vividly of Wuhan in January. That month when everywhere in China were just preparing the lunar new year, then all of a sudden, a new pheumonia of unknown causes occurred in a big bustling city of Wuhan. The city was almost crashed by the novel coronavirus, and followed by a total lockdown. At first the hospitals were all occupied by urgent patients, people were asking and begging for help online. Then the municipal government set up some kinds of provisional hospitals, some were in the cabins, and some were in the stadiums. Even with all those, hospitals were still not enough. And doctors and nurses, as well as PPEs, were all desperately needed. So voluntary doctors and nurses were heading there from all provinces of China. Finally the number of volunteers were huge, but still people were dying. The fatality rate was high at that time, especially for the elders.

That was a big tragic moment of a city's history. But the exact number of how many people dead because of the coronavirus is still not clear. I mean the government has of course given the number. But you never know if it's the truth. How many were under-played, how many were buried at home, and how many were caused by the side effect of the lockdown.

Now the experts of WHO are ongoing their investigation of the origin the virus in Wuhan. I don't think they will care about the mortality number of Wuhan. After all science can never beat politics, right?

What's the weather like there? -20 degree? -50 degree?

God bless Russia!

So Mongolian prime minister resigned, after the protest over a Covid19 infection of a mother and her newborn baby.

A mini Spotify player.

I know there are already quite a few Spotify players out there in the chrome web store. But none of them seems "right". Some of them manipulate the code in Spotify's web player, and some of them even rely on the desktop app of Spotify. But I'm just using the official Spotify API to play music at the background of Chrome. It's simple and useful.

Read the full article here:
Spotify on Chrome

This article is trying to tell the US how dangerous the cult thinking and disinformation is. As Japan has its own painful example of a religious cult in the recent history. The group is called Aum Shinrikyo, who spread the disinformation of a rigged election and pretended to be the savior of the state. Sounds familiar?
Eventually this group used toxic Sarin nerve gas to commit the world's first indiscriminate terrorist attack in a subway station.

Hello everyone. Today when I got up my Gmail and Twitter both notified me that I have got a donation. And it’s not just a cup of coffee. It turns out to be a whole bunch of coffees...

Congratulations to my state company Sinopharm. 100 percent effectiveness in preventing moderate and severe cases of the disease, totally beats the US and UK competitors.

The only question is though: when will the result data be public?

Interesting. First they tried to storm the capital. Now their base camp is stormed. And I learned a lesson that to guarantee free speech, first make sure to protect privacy.

All for the draconian nation security law.