Bloody Shovel 3

Hi, it's been a while.

I don't know if anyone was expecting my take on the 2020 US Presidential election. I mean, I called it. I won a few hundred bucks betting that Trump would lose. But of course I'm not happy about it.

I mean, I'm personally cool. Quite cool really. US global power is coming down, and fast. Pressure on China will soften up (not disappear), Europe is starting to show some balls in asserting some independent foreign policy. See the EU-China Investment Treaty, and Germany actually going on with Nord Stream 2.

Most importantly Trump's loss has been a massive, hilarious steal, a farcical fraud where they blatantly took two weeks to slowly cook up the election results and scam 75 million Americans. The whole thing was the epitome of "not even funny". To think that most of the world today is ruled by such a dumb, ham-fisted third world country is infuriating.

I mean, people, please. Elections in civilized countries take 24 hours, tops. Japan is a big country with 125 million people. It's also fairly low tech, and American political influence means that their government is handicapped in many ways. There are no ID cards, for example. That's part of why Japan has been by far the country worst affected by Corona in East Asia. Well, election results in Japan come down the same day or at most the next morning. In Europe they usually confirm in 4 hours after poll closing. The closest thing I can think of is the Thailand elections in 2019 ...

I'm accused of timing my last post just before the New York Times launched it's much awaited hit-piece on Scott Alexander.

It's all a funny coincidence. But funny it is. Indeed Scott Alexander was the subject of a post I wrote exactly 5 years ago where I also mention the story of Ying Bu.

It's been interesting to see Scott's development since then. On one hand he hasn't changed much. He's got progressively more famous, and deservedly so. He's also got progressively more fat. Which is sad, but not unexpected. Neutered animals also get fat, and Scott talked about himself being basically chemically neutered.

I was pleasantly surprised though with the way he dealt with the New York Times doxing him. Closing the blog was a smart move (and now that I think of it, a great example of a 苦肉計 stratagem 34, the very next one!), and his recent move towards financial independence by moving to substack and starting a private practice is actually pretty ballsy. Good for him. Hopefully at some point he realizes that the best cure for depression is regular sessions of weight-lifting and parties with abundant MDMA and hot chicks.

As it happened we didn't have to pull a Ying Bu on Scott Alexander; the left banished him of their own accord. As such he didn't move ...